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It is a rare but nonetheless painful duty to have to admit that anti-cannabis campaigners might occasionally be right, but on one issue it seems they are bang on the money. Namely, that cannabis causes schizophrenia. I’m not referring to much-reported allegations of mental problems among long-term users, but to cannabis legislators. The wild personality swings of the last 18 months as Labour fudges its drugs laws, then re-fudges them, can only be described as schizophrenic.

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The government, which downgraded the drug in its 2005 drugs act, still seems to prefer tough rhetoric. As a Guardian leader pointed out: “It still has not learned that a war on drugs is a war on the nation’s children.” And you’d have to be mentally disturbed to wage a war on children, right?

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It emerged in June that tokers caught with as few as 5 grams of cannabis - less than 1/5th of an ounce, or enough for about 10-20 joints - could be prosecuted as dealers under new regulations drawn up by the Home Office to be shoe-horned into parliament under last year’s drugs act. The plan to slash the limit for personal use would mean that anyone found with more could face a prison sentence of up to 14 years.

The plan for a 5-gram cannabis threshold marks a sharp reversal from David Blunkett’s decision 18 months ago to ensure that cannabis possession was normally to be dealt with by confiscation and an informal warning.

The proposed thresholds are so low that the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), which discussed the issue in May, is believed to have warned the Home Office that they would cause policing problems. The committee suggested the cannabis threshold should be set at 28 grams, or 1oz.

This compares with Charles Clarke’s first proposals six months ago of 4ozs or 133g of resin, and 500g of grass. These were widely ridiculed, as they would have allowed a dealer to carry 14 oz of weed, worth more than £1,800, and a year’s supply for even heavy users - while still claiming the drug was for personal use.

The ACMD includes some of the world’s leading drug specialists, and is reputed to have an good record of sane advice. In its 30-year history, no home secretary has ignored an ACMD proposal. Hopefully, then, the latest corrections will be accepted and the new home secretary can concentrate on some other failing area of responsibility in his empire.

California Orange Bud is selected for its orange candy aroma and taste. California Orange Bud is one of the easier varieties to clone and cultivate under a variety of conditions. With good care it will produce a heavy crop of good quality. Buds are covered with long orange and deep pink hairs. California Orange Bud is a wise selection for experienced and novice growers alike.

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The current system is a ridiculous game of chance, under which, although the risks of being caught are marginal, for the few who are the consequences can be ruinous. About 3.6 million people, mostly young, use the drug at some point in a year, but only 45,000 in the last statistics (2004) were caught for possession and 2,200 for dealing.

Then in July The Observer reported that according to a radical Home Office report proposing a shake-up in how people caught taking them are treated and punished, the whole illegal drug classification should be scrapped. A review ordered by Charles Clarke before he quit as Home Secretary, proposes dropping the 35-year-old Class A, B or C system.

/>L iÊ vÊV Ìi ÌÃÊ From the editor Page 3 girl Dear Soft Secrets Product Flash Highlife Fairs 2007 Weckels indoor Terraponics Bags News from the UKCIA Coffeeshop Entrepreneurs Weckels outdoor Books International growers Column Dr. Dee Ecology of growing Grow with Jorge Cervantes Strain reports Poster Cook with cannabis Hot Wax Made in Holland Extra products Column Joe Kane The Greenhouse Report New Comic: Spliffy The Champions Column LazyStrain Shop review George Orwell Comic: Der Wrecked Baron Trimmed for you Colofon Index of ads

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Instead it proposes ranking drugs along a ‘spectrum of harm’ ranging from those which almost never kill their users and cause minimal social impact, to substances that cause fatal overdoses and fuel crime by addicts. This would open the door to lighter penalties for drugs which experts argue do not justify the most serious Class A status, such as magic mushrooms and ecstasy.

The findings have now been passed to Clarke’s successor, John Reid, who will feel he’s been placed in an awkward position. He is expected to try to quietly drop if not kill the issue rather than face accusations of being “soft on drugs”.

However, the issue is unlikely to go away. The government’s own advisory body on drugs is backing an overhaul, and even some senior Tories are privately supporting a rethink of drug classification. A report due later this year from the Commons science and technology select committee is also expected to attack a system many scientists regard as illogical and dictated by historical quirks rather than clinical evidence.

Meanwhile, those teenagers being waged war on - and even their parents, it seems - are just getting on with taking what they perceive as the safest route to intoxication, irrespective of the government’s flip-flopping pronouncements.

An Edinburgh study reveals that by the age of 16 one-third of teenagers had taken some form of drug and for 79% of these it was cannabis alone. “Anecdotally, among middleclass people parents may be more tolerant of cannabis than alcohol for children because there seems to be greater risks involved in alcohol both short- and long-term.”

Photo: Helene, France Original breeder: Dutch Passion

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$EAR 3OFT 3ECRETS 2ICK

Here’s some pics of Chronic on day of harvest. Grown under a 400 watt bulb in an auto pot. It’s amazing what you can do on a budget. Keep up your cool paper, it’s a brilliant read with loads of usefull info!

Trev from Cardiff

' DAY 3OFT 3ECRETS

4REV YOU TRIMMED THESE BUDS IN A MOST SLOPPY WAY 9OU WANT US TO DIVE IN THERE

First time grower, Dublin &OR A FIRST TIME GROW THIS IS A GOOD RESULT .EXT TIME DON T OVERFERTI LISE YOUR PLANTS SEE THE YELLOW LEAVES #HECK THE %# OF YOUR FEED WATER CON STANTLY

Check out these little Beauties! White Widow X Big Bud (Female Seeds X Line) from “Charlies Thai Silks” . Germinated them in rockwool under fluorescent light with a pH of 5.8. Planted 10 seeds & got 10 virgins two days later, vegged for 4 weeks x 24hrs at pH of 6.2 using a 4 tube Bright Wing Cool White. They were then transplanted into 15 ltr pots of Canna Coco & using Canna Aqua Flores & B’cuzz Coco Bloom. I only ever use Vinegar to pH down & now that they are 6 weeks into flowering, I also add 10ml of Oxy-Plus with every feed, as this really does improve the size & weight of the final yield. Growing space is a 1m x 1.50m x 2.0m with 600 watt HPS + 250 watt Mh both used with one Adjust-A-Shade. Using both spectrums of light stops the plant from stretching & keeps the internodes short and tight, Basically MORE BUDS ! Ps What do you think of my Bird’s Buds? Not bad for a more Mature Mother Plant!

Nbezani "OTH YOUR BIRD AND THE PLANTS LOOK FANTASTIC THEY MADE US DROOL LIKE THE RETARDS WE REALLY ARE %XCELLENT CHOICE FOR GROWING IN HYDRO GRANULES BY THE WAY "UT MAKE SURE YOU REPLACE THE GRANULES AFTER EVERY GROW BECAUSE THEY TEND TO ACCUMULATE REDUNDANT SALTS FROM THE FEEDWATER

Just thought I would share some pics of what makes me happiest in this world. But the missus insisted on gettin in on the action. Tried to run before I could walk with these though, by trying hydro. Had a few overfeeding problems but managed to get some ok bud. I am going to go back to soil for the next grow.

Steve from Bolton 9OU CALL THIS @/+ BUD x 3ERIOUSLY GO BACK TO SOIL AND NEVER FUCK WITH HYDRO SYSTEMS AGAIN

ÌÌi Ì Ê ÕiÀ >Ê À ÜiÀÃtÊÊ I truly appreciate your magazine and what you guys offer, very informative. Sorry I couldn’t get a naked chick, but Im working on it for my outdoor crop. Anyway, here is my Grapefruit grow, done solely with compact floro’s (for my small space floros were the way to go), but I’ll be moving and getting some HPS lights soon, hope you enjoy the pics - I know I enjoy the smoke.

Dan 6ERY GOOD LOOKING BUD BUDDY ,OTS OF 4(# TO BE SEEN

&ANCY A &2%% PACKET OF (IGH 1UALITY 3EEDS 4HEN SEND US A PICTURE OF YOUR GARDEN INCLUDING A VISIBLE COPY OF 335+ AND WE LL SEND YOU THE SEEDS "54 SHOULD YOUR GARDEN HAPPEN TO FEATURE YOUR TOPLESS GIRLFRIEND OR WIFE YOU EVEN GET A PACK OF "LACK ,ABEL STOCK THE LABEL OF THE CHAMPIONS %DITOR S #HOICE WILL RECEIVE PACKS OF CHOICE OF PRIME "LACK ,ABEL STOCK 3END ALL ENTRIES TO OUR 0O"OX OR E MAIL THEM TO 335+ SOFTSECRETS NL 0LEASE $/. 4 PRINT YOUR DIGITAL PIC ON PAPER BUT EMAIL IT 335+ SOFTSECRETS NL

./4% !LL ENTRIES ARE HANDLED WITH THE UTMOST DISCRETION 7E DON T PUBLISH OUT OF FOCUS PICS AND WE DON T LIKE PHOTOS OF PLANTS IN VEG STAGE )T S FAT BUDS HOT TITS WE WANT TO SEE

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3AFE TO ALL AT 335+

I’ve just harvested my Big Buddah Cheese which I grew from cutting in compost using Formulex and Dr Hornby’s Big Bud during flowering. Everything went well during the grow but I could only flower 1 plant off due to lack of space. Your paper is the bollox and I’ve learnt loads from you and fellow growers. Just gotta big up my mate Matt T who helped me a lot and sorted me the cutting. Respect and Peace to all!

FRAY, West Midlands -ATE HANG THOSE BUDS OUT TO DRY IN A DARK AND VENTILATED ROOM ,IGHT BREAKS OF 4(# IN DRIED BUDS

I got 10 White Widow Dutch Passion seeds, but only 5 worked and they dropped one by one except for this puppy! I gave it a good 8 weeks in bud and now its as fat as my bird’ tits...

SeedySte, Preston &OR A 7HITE 7IDOW THIS IS A EXTRAORDINARY RESULT "UT DO REMOVE ALL DEAD LEAVES AND DEAD LEAVE TIPS FROM YOUR PLANTS NEXT TIME THEY ATTRACT MOULDS AND BLOCK OUT LIGHT FOR LIVING PARTSx -AY WE ALSO SAY WE ADORE YOUR BEAUTIFUL BIRD

(I 'UYS (I 335+

Thanx for a great paper guyz.... Hope you find a spot for my favourite, Artic Sun (fd) x Jock Horror (n), breeder Baklobi. Bloomed under 600w in coir with Canna nutes range, picture at day 53. Kind regards.

Pistol Pete 0ISTOL 0ETE DON T GET ALL HYPED UP ON NAMES THIS LOOKS LIKE AN ORDINARY CROSS 00 X *ACK (ERER TO US 3EED SELLERS THINK UP THE MOST FANTASTIC NAMES FOR WHAT ARE BASICALLY THE SAME GENETICSx 9OUR PLANTS LOOK MARVELOUS THOUGH SO NO SWEAT

Thought I would show what a good Scottish Summer can produce. Both Plants are 24 days into flower. Grown in my conservatory from seed and then out into the garden! One on left is AK47 the other is Mothers Finest.

The Sherriff, Perthshire, Scotland 3HERRIF -OTHER S &INEST IS AN EXCELLENT CHOICE FOR AN OUTDOOR GROW %VEN IN THE FUCKED UP 3COTTISH CLIMATE GOOD RESULTS ARE POSSIBLE

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$EAR 335+ I just wanted to send a photo for your magazine…and hoping to get a pack of seeds for my efforts. I have severe pain issues and appetite problems, so if you happen to have a strain that is potent for use as medical herb, that would certainly be appreciated.

David 7EL $AVE WE D SUGGEST THE .EVILLE S (AZE FROM "LACK ,ABEL )T S ONE OF THE STRONGEST (AZE VARIETIES OUT THERE AND IT S OFTEN USED FOR MEDICAL PURPOSES

9O Y ALL AT 33 Hmmm… I ummmed n ahhhhed.. over sending these.. as I have top idea for another photo shoot.. involving body paints.. black lite.. n spots to illuminate me buds. But well, they is chopped down now.. Maybe next time?? They (the pics) are a bit middle of the road (as is the bod, some might say), but I was well pleased with me buds – off some Blueberry seeds you sent me a good while back now, in the good ole days of 3 packs of seeds for pics – now the challenge is to get Ed’s pic o’the month! I may accept the gauntlet. Cheers for the excellent read.. top mag!

Icequeen in Cornwall )CEQUEEN TO BECOME %DITOR S #HOICE IN 335+ IS NOT FOR EVERYBODYx !CTUALLY IT S LIKE A LIFE TIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD LIKE AN /SCAR FOR "EST 'ROWER 0HOTOGRAPHER OR LIKE A .OBEL 'ROW PRICE /NCE YOU VE ACHIEVED THIS NOTHING ELSE IN LIFE MATTERS ANYMORE 9OU MADE IT TO THE TOP YOU HAVE ARRIVED AT A LONELY LEVEL n STRAIGHT UP THERE WITH THE STARS THE RICH AND FAMOUS 4HE EDITOR WOULD LIKE TO THANK YOU AND SAYS h+EEP THE DREAM ALIVE v

From Marcela in Spain

(I THERE

-ARCELA

YOUR BUDS ARE TRIMMED ALLRIGHT BUT WHAT ABOUT THE REST !N UNKEMPT BUSH IS SOOO SEVENTEESx #OME ON GET ON THE BUS

AND PLEASE SHAVE WHAT NEEDS TO BE SHAVED

These are my Sensi Star girls, just harvested on day 60. They were grown in an aqua farm, using House and Garden nutrients and under a 600w HPS. Great smell, excellent smoke!

Miss B. 3ENSI 3TAR IS AN EXCELLENT SMOKE A BIT SWEET AND FRUITY -ISS " IS NOT TO BE DISTURBED THE COMING MONTHSx

$EAR 335+ I hope my first grow of Chronic is good enough for your numero uno mag. On the other photo outdoor KC-33, 3 weeks from chop. Peace & Love BA (Mr. T) $UDE THE PLANTS ARE AS BIG AS THE POTS THEY RE INx .OT VERY IMPRESSIVE EH .EXT TIME GIVE THEM MORE VEG TIME AND USE BIGGER POTS OR A STRONGER LAMP "UT THEY DO LOOK GOOD WE HAVE TO ADMITx

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$EAR 335+

Here are a few pictures of my plants, harvested after just seven weeks. They are Hindu Kush and were grown from seed, in rockwool cubes, then transplanted into an NFT 424 system for flowering using Bcuzz nutrients under a 600w HPS. Hope you like the pics!

C from Hull (INDU +USH WAS VERY POPULAR IN (OLLAND A FEW YEARS BACK 0ROFESSIONAL GROWERS USED THE VARIETY IN THE THOUSANDS

AND EVERY DECENT COFFEESHOP HAD IT ON IT S MENU 7E VE NO IDEA WHY THAT IS NO LONGER THE CASE TO BE FAIRx

$EAR 3OFT 3ECRETS Excellent read your paper! Here are the results of my second harvest! This time I had 1 cloned Grapefruit, 4 Neville’s Haze, 3 Hash Plants, and 4 White Widows from my last crop, and now I’m waiting for 7 Jack Herer to flower from some Black Label seeds you sent me, and I must say that they look very good and strong plants. I also send you this photo of this lovely unexpected visitor that somehow got up in to my loft! I’ve had my ladies under 600w HPS and have been feeding them House & Garden nutrients as well as a bit of extra CO2 from a method I found on the internet that contains sugar and yeast. The two big buds came from one of my Hash Plants and it’s a seriously crazy smoke! Now I want to try and grow a top quality breed that will be short to medium height, to have a quick flowering period, to be good for Sea of Green growing and have the best yield possible. Out of the B.L seeds I think Ole 47 is the one that meets all the criteria. If you have a better breed for the job please send it!

Mr T.

(I 335+

I thought readers might like to check out one of my favourite varieties...Citral x Skunk cross. It is the favourite for flavour and effect (quite heavy) with my friends, it is not fussy, grows well, and stops when put into flower, and forms sticky medium sized buds from the top down to the very bottom, whether you are flowering a huge bush or a 6 inch sprig...no air buds. It is a delight to grow and harvest. I would marry this variety. I don’t ever want to be without it.

C & J frae Dundee #ITRAL X 3KUNK SEEMS LIKE AN INTERESTING VARIETY TO US INDEEDx 7HO S THAT WOMAN ON THE FLOOR AND WHAT S SHE DOING THERE 7AITING TO BE FERTILISED

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9ES THAT S RIGHT /LÏ IS A MUCH UNDERAPPRECIATED PLANT SO WE WILL SEND YOU SOME TO TEST @EM FOR YOURSELF

Ad like to thank me ma me da and all me mates coz a could’nt of done this without them, No.1 x Big Bud, 4 weeks grow 11 weeks flower.

Yours since’ sticky pussy.

YW -ATE STOP FUCKING AROUND WITH THOSE EXCELLENT HEAVY BUDS AND START TRIMMING THOSE MONSTERSx

(ELLO THERE 3OFT 3ECRETS TOP PAPER

What u reckon to my fat buds and hot tits?

Here we got 4 Hash Plants grown in water with an airstone bubbling away under a 600w light, 5” extractor and filter, these were grown for 3 weeks then flowered for just under 11 week, the system was fully emptied on 7 week and filled back up with good old plain water to flush the babies. Hash Plant gets some serious fat buds and so can easily get mould so a decent dehumidifier was used for the final 4 weeks and it worked, no mould! My top tip is to wash your hands in vegetable oil to get rid of the sticky fingers.

HASHLEY, South Yorkshire 4HANKS FOR THIS SOFT SECRET MATE 'ROWING (ASH 0LANT ON A HYDRO SYSTEM IS DA BOMB (ASH 0LANT PRODUCES MORE 4(# THAN YOUR AVERAGE PLANT AND THE LEAVES AND EVEN BRANCHES ARE OFTEN ALMOST COATED IN IT 5SE TRIM WASTE FROM (ASH 0LANT FOR THE BEST HASH AROUND OR INDULGE YOURSELF IN MAKING THAT ULTIMATE 3PACE #AKE 'OOD JOB SUPPORTING THOSE BIG BUDS SO THEY STAY UPRIGHT THAT S THE WAY TO GO

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The arresting sight of my sexy wife, and my first attempt at growing KaliMist. Great paper, keep up the good work!

P & P, Surrey 7OW LIKE A WET DREAM COME TRUE

THIS ISx

(I LADS

Here’s a few pics of my lovely girlfriend modeling my mate’s harvest. Some fancy outdoor plants that were self sown.

Everything kept totally natural and so is my missus. Hope you enjoy the nips as well as the buds!

Capt. Midnite & Laura Wellborn, England

4HE 3NOWMAN #OVENTRY

7E HAVE THIS NEW COMIC STAR CALLED 3PLIFFY ON PAGE ,AURA COULD WELL BE THE REAL LIFE VERSION OF HER 'REAT PICS 4HOUGH OUT OF FOCUS AND SENT TO US AS A SHITTY LOUSY PRINT FROM A PERFECT DIGITAL SHOT WE LIKED HER SO MUCH WE STILL DECIDED TO REWARD YOU FOR IT 7ELL DONE

WE WISH WE WOULD HAVE GIRLS LIKE THIS RIGHT HERE AND NOW AT THE OFFICE n EVEN WHEN THE NEXT ISSUE WOULD COME OUT AFTER 8 MAS x

$EAR 335+ I took this picture while I still have a copy of SS to do it with as someone always steals it from my house. The plant is a Lowryder, the seeds came from UK grown Lowryders, out of 4 seeds only this one has actually stayed true to the LR gene of height, the others are more than double the size of this one and have not got as much bud just yet.

My plants are growing under a standard 400w HPS in a cubicle a little less than a meter square in soil/vermiculite mix and have been fed with a little concoction of my own up till flowering and since flowering started I have been using Ionic Bloom.

Greenfingered /K VERY NICE SUCH A SMALL BONSAI TYPE PLANT

BUT WHAT DOES IT DO FOR YOUR HARVEST 4HIS LITTLE BITCH WOULD BE FED INTO MAYBE JOINTS HERE AT THE OFFICE HARDLY ENOUGH TO SURVIVE TILL LUNCH TIME

Thanks to all the great tips and guides in your magazine, my buds are as big as a human head at just week 3! I’ll send another in 4 weeks, with some lady lumps in view, for a chance of bagging some Black Label seeds. Great magazine guys n gals.

Skinster, Suffolk

Here’s a Sensi Seeds’ Outdoor Mix plant grown under a 600W HPS. This is our first Indoor Grow here in Luxembourg.

Greetz $UDE WHY THE FUCK DO YOU GROW AN OUTDOOR VARI ETY INDOORS 4HOUGH YOUR LADY LOOKS FINE

YOU COULD HAVE HAD BETTER VARIE TIES TO GROW INDOORSx 4HEY RE MORE POTENT

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` Ì À½ÃÊ V VitÊ

$EAR 3OFT 3ECRETS

The time has come once again for “The Skipster” to share with all your Soft Secrets UK readers his WW x BIG BUD harvest and his faitful assistant Sheila! The end result after 11 days drying 10 plants was 1050 Grams of mind blowing Pot, grown under 250 MH + 600 HPS = 850 Watts.

The Skipster, West London 7ELL DONE 3KIPSTER 7E SEE 3HEILA IS BEGGING FOR OUR SEED SO WHO ARE WE TO DENY HER

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$EAR 3OFT 3ECRETS

I’m inserting 1 picture of my (SuperSkunk number 1) crop for you to see!

I love your paper and it’s contents as it’s really interesting. Can’t wait to get the seeds though! I’m just about to crop again, and know it’ll be a good one as alway’s! Which babies do you like better, my boobs, or the plants?

Keep up the good work Soft Secrets... xxx

My friend Emily looking great with The Docter.

Bolton bud head

Love Sez, England 3EZ WE RE DROWNING HERE IN BUDS AND JOINTS SO THIS TIME WE DEFINETALY WOULD GO FOR YOUR LOVELY BOOBS 4O ADD ANOTHER REASON NORMALLY 3UPER 3KUNK PRODUCES HUGE BUDS

EVEN ON A MONSTROUS SCALE WHEN YOU GROW THEM IN BIG POTS WITH RICH SOIL

I’ve finally plucked up the courage to send u piccies of my last years outdoor & indoor Cheese x Psychosis (I think) crop along with my wifes aging, but firm, fair-skinned Gaelic body. I was intrigued by your article on Top44 x Skunk Special. 1 variety that has stunned me this year is Sweettooth, which was given 1 six-hour night during its 24hour (constant light) growth cycle at around 4 weeks. It then decided to flower & despite my best efforts to stop it/ slow it down, it continued to produce some small but lovely well-knuckled-up buds under 24hour lighting . Even after 8 weeks of continuous light it did not go back to veg, so I decided to plant it out (after summer solstice) with my other varieties hoping that the buds would just keep getting bigger & better, whereupon it decided to go back to veg growth. Some 8 weeks later now it is well into producing new buds. Has anyone come across this behavior before? Is this a characteristic of Ruderalis? As it flowers under 24 hour does this mean that it will produce the same results but twice as fast?

Anonymous

(ELLO GUYS This is my latest crop with my girlfriend. The plants were Ice, Cyber Crystal, Strawberry Haze Special. All growing under 600w lights in NFT system.

Cyrus

4HIS BEHAVIOUR IS INDEED THE RESULT OF 2UDERALIS GENETICS 6ARIETIES WHICH WERE CROSSED WITH A 2UDERALIS LIKE FOR EXAMPLE SOME ., VARIETIES SHOW THE SAME STRANGE BEHAVIOUR .O MATTER WHAT THE NAME IS OF A VARIETY ONCE IT HAS BEEN CROSSED WITH A 2UDERALIS IT WILL HAVE THE TENDENCY TO START BLOOMING WHENEVER IT WANTS NO MATTER WHAT LIGHT CYCLES ARE THROWN AT HER "ECAUSE OF THE 2UDERALIS GENETICS IT IS NO LONGER NEEDED TO CHANGE LIGHT CYCLES OR SWITCH BACK TO HOURS 3OMETIMES THESE PLANTS START TO BLOOM RIGHT AWAY AS A SEEDLING 3OME INDOOR GROWERS STILL ACHIEVE SUCCESES WITH THESE PLANTS BUT MOSTLY THEY ARE GROWN OUTDOORS 4O TRY AND PUT THIS PLANT BACK FOR BLOOM TO VEG IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE 4HERE ARE ALSO HUGE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL 2UDERALIS PLANTS SOME WILL START TO BLOOM WHEN OTHERS ARE ABOUT READY FOR THE CHOP !LL IN ALL A NIGHTMARE FOR YOUR AVERAGE INDOOR GROWER

$EAR 3OFT 3ECRETS

Here are some pictures of our Girls.

Grown in a soil mix with General Hydroponics Flora series at 3 weeks into flowering. We are also using B’cuzz Bloom Booster and Hygrozyme enzymes. We have one Great White Shark, and several other strains. Your mag has been a great help to us, keep up the good work!

Fred and Barny, Ohio, USA (EALTHY LOOKING GALS DUDES !ND RESPECT TO YOU ALL SINCE YOU NEED A LOT OF GUTS TO GROW IN THE 53! THESE DAYS 4HE 4ALIBAN LIKE SENTENCES WHICH ARE HANDED OUT TO INNOCENT GROWERS ARE OUTRIGHT SCANDALOUS SO IT S GOOD TO SEE THERE S STILL SOME FIGHT LEFT IN 53 GROWERS 7E SUP PORT YOU ALL THE WAY GUYS )T S ABOUT FUCKING TIME THE 53! BECOMES THE ,AND OF THE &REE AGAINx

$EAR 3OFT 3ECRETS My I Grow box has just had it’s first harvest and I am so shocked at the amount and quality it produced. I don’t know what came over me I’m usually quite a shy and quite girl. Well, not anymore especially since the buds are as big as my tits!

Alex

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Õi >LÊ Dampkring Growshop are pleased to introduce the Bluelab range of equipment to their shop in Amsterdam.

The Bluelab EC Truncheon is the best selling hydroponic EC meter in the world. The Truncheon features easy-to-read EC, CF, and ppm scales, has no external switches or adjustment knobs, automatically turns on when inserted into a nutrient solution and shuts off a short time after removing it from the solution. Factory calibrated, the Bluelab Truncheon is completely waterproof.

The Bluelab Truncheon measures the nutrient strength of a solution. It is essential when growing hydroponics to KNOW what the strength of the solution is before feeding your plants AND while they are growing.

The Bluelab PH Truncheon with it’s easy to read illuminated display, onetouch calibration system, super clear instructions and no buttons to push, makes measuring pH a whole lot simpler.You’ve asked for it... Bluelab built it!

The flashing lights you love so much; the easiest calibration system ever; reliability only Bluelab products can provide; the longest lasting replaceable probe on the market; auto-on and off just like the Bluelab EC Truncheon; Automatic Temperature Compensation; a scale of 2.0 pH through 10.9 pH and it’s available worldwide.

The Bluelab pH Truncheon carries a 3-year meter warranty and a 1-year warranty on the replaceable probe.

The Bluelab Combo Meter is a conductivity, pH and temperature meter all in one. It comes with a pH probe and conductivity and temperature probe, which are simply placed into the solution and the selected reading is displayed on screen.

As the Bluelab Combo Meter is portable and does not require a power supply to operate, it can be used anytime and anywhere to help you manage your crops daily nutrient requirements. Calibration of the pH is very easy, using the push buttons on the meter and fresh Bluelab calibration solutions. Conductivity and temperature do not need to be calibrated as this is locked in during manufacture. The Bluelab Combo Meter gives you the added benefit of being able to select the display options for °C or °F and EC, CF or PPM. Call in and see us for a Bluelab demonstration in our live indoor garden. You’ll find us straight in front of Amsterdam Central Station at Prins Hendrikkade 10-11.

Website: www.dampkringshop.com

-Õ«iÀ v>ÃÌÊÌÀ }ÊÜ Ì Ê Ì iÊ iÜiÃÌÊ-ÌÀ ««iÀÊ For many years the Swiss industrial trimming machines from Strippers have had a high reputation for speed and reliability. After many years of continuous development of the successful The Big One model, there is now The Medium One, so that now every grower can profit from the ease of Strippers trimmers.

The fact that with all current carbon filters there is one thing or the other wrong with them was the motivation for the design of a new type of carbon filters, the Carboriginal air filters. The aim: to combine all the qualities of a top quality carbon filter and at the same time overcoming the known disadvantages of existing carbon filters.

Here are the advantages spelled out in a part-by-part comparison: the Low Density-carbon has more air passages in it and therefore a greater filter capacity. As a result they last longer before they become saturated, and they are very well suited for use in a damp environment. The perforations in the steel outer wall are bigger, so the air suction unit has to work less hard. Wearing out more slowly also means a better return on the investment. The climate in the space in which they are used is also more easy to regulate. Carboriginal filters are designed so as to be able to be used in two ways. On the one hand they can be used as a suction filter, and on the other as an expulsion filter. The filter fabric is glued to the interior wall. This means that movement during its filling up is eliminated. By vibrating the carbon granules, more carbon is packed into a single filter and leakage due to trapped air is pretty much impossible. The filters are equipped with a springy foam ring that holds the contents of the filters even more securely in place.

Carboriginal air filters have a maximum length of 1 metre and a maximum diameter of 50 cms, constructed from a single piece of steel. They have a larger capacity and are stronger and lighter than existing carbon filters of 1.5 metres in length. Thanks to this they are more easy to work with. On the underside of the larger filters is fixed a metal, tapering spigot. This “cone”, fashioned from a single steel plate, ensures a proportional air distribution, which in turn thereby prevents premature saturation.

The strengthened, metal rim also ensures that there is considerably less damage done during transport and mounting. The curved edge of the rim prevents the flexible hose from coming loose.

The filters are available in all common sizes and packed in an airtight, plastic protective sleeve and a sturdy cardboard box that is equipped with pre-punched handles that make lifting or moving a lot easier. Without doubt it is fair to call Carboriginal air filters the best and most complete carbon filters that are currently available.

Info: Hy-Supply Tél: +31 (0) 481 452290 // Fax: +31 (0) 481 452910 www.hysupply.nl // E-mail: info@hysupply.nl

Õ> > }Ê Each new season, bat guano proves itself anew as a trusty ally of the ecologically-minded cannabis grower. This product ensures in the most natural way that your plants will have access to royal quantities of the primary nutrients, enzymes and micro-elements they need for a successful bloom.

The new Medium Stripper is much smaller in comparison with the Big Stripper, as well as quieter and almost half the price, yet it still has the industrialstrength reliability and lifespan that have come to be associated with Strippers. Naturally the machine has been thoroughly tested for safety and has been awarded a consumer safety kite mark.

There is also a bag that comes with the Medium Stripper that attaches to catch the trim waste, and the user can vary the trimming speed. The Big One Stripper is already available for hire at various outlets around the country, and given the qualities of The Medium One, it surely cannot be long before your grow shop is stocking it.

Check the demonstration film clips at www.growside.com and see for yourself how much better the Strippers work. Grow shop owners please note: for prices, information or a demonstration make contact with the Growside wholesalers in Maastricht.

Info: Growside Maastricht VOF Tél: +31 (0) 43 362 7990 // Fax: +31 (0) 43 362 7651 www.growside.com E-mail: info@growside.nl

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Guanokalong is created from select sources that create a feed of first class quality. It comes from Indonesia, where the bats feed on forest fruit and create a dung that is ideal or cultivation of cannabis. After top grower Soma recommended Guanokalong, there was a surge in the brand’s popularity, but the truth is that it had long before been a firm favourite with many growers on account of the refined, sweet taste that Guanokalong gives to plants fed on it.

Guanokalong is available in two different varieties; Guanokalong in granule form is ideal for mixing with soil because they dissolve slowly, thanks to which they will provide nutrient for the duration of the grow cycle.

Guanokalong in powder form ensures a rapid uptake. One way of serving it to the plants is by spreading a very fine layer of it over the surface of the substrate and then watering. Another way is by dissolving it in warm water and then irrigating the plants with the solution. Guanokalong is also available in liquid form for use as a supplement to the regular nutrients you give. www.guanokalong.nl

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WONDERS "Y 7ECKELS

5SING A GROW CUPBOARD WITH MAPITO AND COCO AS SUBSTRATES PART above 27-28°C, we will still catch the thermometer once in a while creeping up to register a temperature of 29 or 30°C. All in all this is not such a shocking observation, but even so it is something that we as growers should be trying to prevent as much as we can. With a temperature of 30°C, the growth of the plant comes pretty much to a standstill, and that is something of a shame when you consider the amount of energy we’re pumping in to the grow cupboard in total!

In my previous article we took a look at a grow cupboard that was pretty easy to set up and equip. In this issue we’ll be trading up and looking at a professionally-equipped grow cupboard, as well as how we can raise plants on two different substrates, so that we can get a good comparison of the (potential) differences.

The grow cupboard that we will be looking at in this article is more luxurious and easy to use than the one we looked at last time. What is more, the cupboard is also quite a bit bigger in volume, which also makes the growing operation a bit more congenial. For the lighting in this grow cupboard I have plumped for six 250-watt lamps.

So in total the plants are lit by 1500 watts. We have deliberately gone for six 250-watt lamps rather than, say, two 600-watters. In doing so, the light is more evenly distributed throughout the whole growing area, and this will be to the benefit of the eventual yield. What is more, the plants will develop much better and more evenly than if they had been raise competing constantly for the available light.

ÀÀ }>Ì The positioning of the plants is also quite different to the previous grow cupboard. The plants are now stood two by two, which reduces the wastage of light quite a bit. This was not the case in the previous grow cupboard, where the plants were placed in a row next to each other. What is more the slightly large size of the grow cupboard that we are looking at this time can easily accommodate lovely big bushes rather than skinny plants that immediately shoot up in height.

>«>V ÌÞ As well as the difference in lamps, this grow cupboard also has a much larger capacity ventilator. A ventilator with at least 1500 cubic metres capacity is needed to keep the grow cupboard free of stench and overly-warm air.

We are also deliberately going for a ventilator with a large capacity (for a grow cupboard ), because this ventilator will also be able to suck fresh air (from outside) in to the grow cupboard. To make this process somewhat easier still, we have mounted the grow cupboard on a pallet, which allows us to keep the base of the cupboard open. The ventilator can now suck the fresh air (from outside the grow cupboard) through the gaps in the pallet in to the grow cupboard. This system works superbly and the plants will be continuously supplied with fresh air, which will benefit their growth (and later their bloom too) tremendously.

The refreshment of air in a grow cupboard did have a tendency to cause problematic situations in the past in, since every hole or slit in the cupboard allowed a glimmer of bright light to escape, which always had the possibility of piquing the curiosity and attracting the interest of unwanted guests.

The cold air that we suck from outside in to the cupboard also has the beneficial effect of acting as a coolant for the cupboard. Despite the large ventilation capacity the temperature of such a small space, thanks to the many lamps, is raised rapidly. This is anything but handy for the marihuana plants. Even though we do our absolute best to not allow the temperature to rise

(ERE WE CAN SEE THE PROFESSIONALLY EQUIPPED GROW CUPBOARD 4HE CUPBOARD IS KEPT FREE OF STENCH AND OVERLY WARM AIR BY USING A VENTILATOR OF AT LEAST CUBIC METRES

Where in the previous article we were using a somewhat less professional grow cupboard, thanks to which we had to look for creative solutions when we were forced or wanted to take a few days off from the demanding schedule of plant care, this ‘problem’ is no longer an issue with this professionallyequipped cupboard. The plants this time can bank on a professional irrigation system and this is something that will save us as growers a whole lot of messing around hauling buckets of water. The irrigation system provides the plants during the each light period continuously with water, with all sorts of liquid nutrients mixed in with it. The small drops of feed water with which the irrigation system soaks the substrate makes sure that the plants (over and over again and in equal measure) are provided with everything they need. We are growing the plants on a nutrientpoor subsoil and so we have to find this alternative way of meeting its nutritional needs.

>« Ì

4HE PLANTS ARE GIVEN FEED WATER AUTOMATICALLY VIA AN IRRIGATION SYSTEM 4WO PLANTS GROW ON A SUBSTRATE OF ROUGH CHIPS OF COCO THE OTHER TWO PLANTS GROW ON FLAKES OF MAPITO

For two out of the four plants we use mapito as the substrate. This is a medium consisting of flakes, and one that I have used only once some time ago. It is a petroleum-based foam that is produced for the furniture industry, and it serves as a filling for things like settees. The trimmed off-cuts left over from the production process are sliced up into flakes, whereupon it becomes known as mapito. These flakes have become a popular medium for growers because they weigh very little and they can be used for raising highyield harvests. It is also a really good substrate for growing on.

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4HE PLANTS ARE ILLUMINATED BY SIX WATT LAMPS )N THIS WAY THE LIGHT IS NICELY SPREAD OVER THE WHOLE GROWING AREA

eventually hit more feed water they can use. If the plants can just let the roots grow for long enough, they will come through the drainage holes of the uppermost tub, after which the roots will be able to dangle in to the vat with the feed water in it. Now the roots of the plants have reached true paradise and can take up and supply the plant with as much feed water as they can possible wish for! Now we have established a system that is (more or less) the same as the growing method we use whereby we raise the plants exclusively in their feed water as their substrate.

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The other two plants are grown on a rough mixture of coco (coconut fibre).

The mapito and the rough coco mix are both used in our space in tubs of 80 litres. This large size of the tubs means that the plants have more than enough room in which to develop themselves a healthy and strong root system.

Furthermore, thanks to the size of the tubs they will be better anchored and so better able to produce a good harvest. In order to boost the stability in the rather airy flakes, the clones are rooted in very large rock wool blocks. These rock wool blocks suck themselves full of water, thanks to which the plants stand as sturdily as a house. In addition to this, the flakes of mapito and the rough chunks of coco can hold a huge amount of oxygen in them, so that the roots of the plants have no chance of suffocating in their 80 litre subsoil.

The other method is where we give the plants hardly any feed water and hardly use the irrigation system either.

The plants will now let their roots grow endlessly, in the hope that they will

The tubs themselves hang in another tub, through which the feed water (gently) streams. There are actually two forms of growing possible with such a system. We can choose to give the young clones, once they have had a few days to develop a small root system, a continuous supply of feed water (via the irrigation system). By doing this the root growth of the plant will be pretty drastically reduced, given that the plant now has more than enough feed water at its disposal. In short, the roots of the plant when using this method will not be prompted to grow in search of new feed water.

Which growing method deserves our preference is actually quite hard to say, because with either grow method we can get very good results come harvest time. So essentially it is up to you as a grower which you prefer. It should be noted though that the latter method, whereby the roots are encouraged to grow as long as possible (as they grow in search of water), does require a

bit more experience from the grower.

We are still saddled with the dilemma of whether to give the plants water immediately or not in order to make a good root growth possible. Should we give the plants too much feed water, then the roots will never reach the required depth. If we give the plants really (far) too little feed water, then they run the risk of being killed off. In short, it is down to the grower’s ‘feel’ when it is finally time to give them water. This can be pretty tricky for novice growers, so maybe it is better after all if they stick at first to the former growing method (in which we give the plants feed water continuously during each light period via the irrigation system).

In the following article we will be taking another look at our original (more basic set up) grow cupboard.

We will be looking at among other things how we can keep the luxuriantlygrowing marihuana bushes under some sort of control, so that we can make a good harvest possible!

"ECAUSE THE GROW CUPBOARD IS STOOD ON A PALLET THE VENTILATOR CAN SUCK IN THE FRESH AIR FROM OUTSIDE THE GROW CUPBOARD VIA THE SLATS IN THE PALLET INTO THE GROW CUPBOARD

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still go on to succeed in making great end results.

/ iÊ-Õ«iÀ >ÌÕÀ> Ê/iÀÀ>« ÌÊ À> `ÊÊ 7HAT COULD BE EASIER THAN STICKING A CLONE IN THE EARTH GIVING IT WATER AND AFTER EIGHT WEEKS BEING ABLE TO HARVEST A SMOKEABLE PLANT .OT HAVING TO WORRY ABOUT HOW MUCH MANURE TO GIVE IT AND WHAT SOIL MIX YOU HAVE TO USE IS PRETTY HANDY FOR MANY PEOPLE ESPECIALLY FOR THOSE NOT BLESSED WITH GREEN FINGERS AND ONLY INTERESTED IN HAVING SOMETHING DECENT OF THEIR OWN TO SMOKE /F COURSE THERE ARE MANY DO IT YOURSELF AND STARTER PACKETS ON THE MARKET BUT ONE IN PARTICULAR CAUGHT OUR NOTICE RECENTLY IF ONLY FOR THE FACT THAT THE BASIS OF THIS PACKAGE CONSISTS OF REAL LAVA 4HE IMPORTERS PROMISE THAT THE INEXPERIENCED GROWER CAN GET RIGHT TO WORK WITH IT )T IS NOT ONLY USER FRIENDLY BUT THE YIELDS PROMISED ARE INCREDIBLY HIGH FOR A SYSTEM SUCH AS THIS 4HE NAME OF THIS WONDER PRODUCT THE 3UPERNATURAL "RAND 4ERRAPOT minerals, there are also two sorts of diatomic earth in it, three different sorts of calcium, Leonardite, humusrich and naturally acid, hormones and enzymes, organic carbons, volcanic rock, vermiculite and perlite, nutritional vitamin B1 and other vitamins.

4HE CLONES GO INTO THE 4ERRAPOT

BLOCKS AND ALL

When watching volcanic eruptions on the TV news are you ever struck by how many people chose and still choose to live on the sides of such a fire-spitting mountain? They live and work there because the soil consists mostly of lava from previous eruptions, and offers the ultimate in fertility, guaranteeing high crop yields year after year.

The Egyptians had things a bit easier; no volcanoes and resulting casualties, and yet they still got to enjoy the benefits of volcanic activity. The Nile constantly carried all kinds of minerals and other nutrients with it, including quite regularly lava from the interior of Africa.

Already in the distant past the Egyptians planted their crops along the banks of the great, nourishing river. By using an ingenious irrigation system people were able to control the Nile and water their crops with an ebb-and-flow system. At each annual flood the water deposited a layer of fertile silt on the fields. Over the centuries, in this way various mineralbearing layers were laid down in the soil, with varying compositions. Even today these fields along the Nile are still known as one of the most fertile areas on earth. Terraponics has had specialised laboratories analyse these layers one by one, and with the knowledge they gathered developed the Terrapot .

%ND RESULT OF AN INDOOR GROW

The Terrapot is actually not a pot but a bag, that is filled with various layers of lava mixed with baked earth granulates.

Each layer also has its own mineral composition, just as is found in nature.

In addition to the extensive range of

In other words, it promises a very rich growth, containing all the right nutrients for a healthy start and development of our plant, thanks to the division into various layers that mean the plant is always able to get hold of all the various nutrients that she needs at each particular moment in the various stages of her development.

(ERE THE PLANTS HAVE JUST BEEN SWITCHED OVER TO BAGS OF EARTH FROM "IO (ENKIE

bag. The uppermost roots have to grate along the soil in order to be able to take up the finest particles. On top of that, the medium is so loose that it is hard to give too much water or to over-feed.

4OP RESULT

By creating their own system of nutrients that work in cooperation with the growth medium the natural way that the plant feeds itself is completely optimised. At the same time the exchange of gases that occurs at the root tips is strongly increased. By giving nutrients via a dish system or via an ingenious ebb and flood system from Terraponics itself, there is a sort combination of hydroponic and organic growing methods created.

Limiting factors, such as in hydropnics for example, where in the plant roots are robbed both of their natural transpiration process as well as their uptake of colloids (or substances that are finely distributed in a fluid, whereby the particles are larger than a molecule and smaller than those found in a suspension), fall away.

Nor do the bags contain any acidic clumps of peat, such as can be found in many soils, so the plants are in no way hindered in their growth.

The layered design of the contents maximises the uptake of nutrients by the way that the lowest roots, which are normally made for going in search of ground water, can get their nutrients out of the perlite at the bottom of the

Terraponics has attempted to bring stability and balance together in a natural earth/lava medium that has the property of being able to absorb water-soluble nutrients and then male these available to the plant when the conditions dry out. This hybrid approach combining traditional and hydro-growing is not only capable of bringing plants to maturity more quickly, but to raise eventual yields too.

In addition to this, you also get to keep the natural organic taste and nutritional value of the original soil-grown crop.

The importer claims even more advantages than just those of unsurpassed results. So the system lowers the production costs, lowers the risks of salt damage, breaks down over-sized nutrients in the medium and prevents poor reproduction. The overlygenerous use of nutrients in traditional methods is something that can retard root growth and raise the sensitivity to salt stress. It can also interrupt the bloom and ripening stage if the concentrations of nutrients such as zinc and calcium are thrown out of balance.

The increased root growth in the bags helps the plants to withstand the stress of drought and heat, along with the potential shock of being re-potted.

The importer further claims that thanks to the plants’ strong, healthy leaf cover and stem, spint mites leave them alone, and even that plants already ravaged by spint recover fully when they are transferred into the Terraponics system.

Sick plants will recover rapidly and can

We have not (yet) been able to check these health claims, but we are provisionally prepared to give the importer the benefit of the doubt. We are also nice and busy with a different way or working with the “wonder” bags from Terraponics. We basically wanted to try once again to grow in the old fashioned (and in the Netherlands, legal) way: with just a couple of plants on our balcony, and saw in the grow method an outstanding way of starting off our weed with a sort of supercharge. Because the system is basically designed for indoor growing with a one-to-two week growth period and we were looking at a Summer with a vegetative growth of 13 weeks, from mid-may to mid-August, it was necessary to drastically alter the feeding scheme. We of course would have had to phone the importer for larger bags (they come in 5, 20 and 30 litre sizes, and we had the 5 litre size) and / or for more nutrient, but in the end we decided to postpone this project until next year.

For this season we got hold of some of the huge 60-litre bags of pre-fertilized organic soil from Bio Henkie. We also planned to go on holiday and the neighbour, who seems to only know anything about insurance and is capable of, at best, giving water. That’s why…

At the time this article was written - 17 August 2006 – we had just wrapped three 1.75 metre-high giant bushes, all topped, in black agricultural plastic in order to bring them in to bloom in four days. If the end of the Summer is a lovely as it was last year then we are sitting pretty.

The hot Summer and the Terrapot bags have in any case already given us a very good base on which to work!

3OLID HEALTHY PLANTS THANKS TO 4ERRAPOT

AND READY FOR THE BLOOM PERIOD

&OR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE 4ERRAPOT BAGS FROM 4ERRAPONICS 4ERRAPONICS %UROPE 4HE 6INTNERS 4EMPLE &ARM )NDUSTRIAL %STATE 3OUTHEND ON 3EA %SSEX 33 2: 5NITED +INGDOM 4 & 7ITH THANKS TO !GRA 'ROW FROM !PELDOORN .,

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*"( 4

D G S

L N Q E -DVR

* ViÊÌ ÊÌ>À}iÌÊV> >L ÃÊv>VÌ À ià A national police crackdown on illegal cannabis factories has been launched.

The operation involves close to 20 police forces in England and Wales and is expected to last for two weeks.

Cannabis factories will be closed down by police and the criminal networks who run them disrupted and dismantled.

The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) is expected to announce further details of the crackdown later on Monday.

Alan Gibson, Acpo’s lead on cannabis cultivation, said: “Cannabis cultivation is an increasing problem which must be nipped in the bud.

“This operation will see police closing cannabis factories across the country, arresting those concerned and using the Proceeds of Crime Act to attack the criminal profits being made.

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* ViÊ >Õ V Ê «iÀ>Ì ÊÌ ÊV ÃiÊ V> >L Ãʼv>VÌ À iý A nationwide crackdown on cannabis “factories” has been launched by police alarmed by figures showing that the high-strength “skunk” variety of the drug now accounts for 60 per cent of the UK market.

An operation involving 17 forces in England and Wales will run over the next two weeks with the aim of closing hundreds of cannabis cultivation units, ranging from vast warehouses on farms to terraced suburban houses crammed with plants, and disrupting the crime gangs behind them.

Skunk contains far higher quantities of the chemical THC than herbal or resinbased cannabis The growth of skunk, which has overtaken more “traditional” herbal or resin cannabis, has accelerated over the last six years.

“Cannabis cultivation is seen by criminals as a low risk, high profit industry, but this operation will send out a clear message that cannabis production is a serious offence and that offenders will be brought to justice.

Skunk is significantly more profitable, selling at up to £120 an ounce, compared to up to £70 for herbal and up to £50 for resin.

“Not only is the money from cannabis cultivation ploughed back into serious crime, but the bypassing of the electricity needed to run the factories causes risk of fire and electrocution and they have already caused several devastating fires.”

British gangsters are heavily involved in “hydroponic” cultivation of skunk growing plants in secluded warehouses using liquid nutrients.

As part of the operation, police are expected to ask the public to look out for telltale signs of cannabis factories being run from properties in their neighbourhood.

These include the windows of a property being permanently covered, gardening equipment left outside or a pungent smell emanating from inside. $ATE 3OURCE 4HE 'UARDIAN

ÀÜ V Ê* ViÊÀ> `ÊV> >L ÃÊv>À Police today revealed they were stepping up their fight against large-scale cannabis factories after discovering drug barons are using homes in the county solely to grow the plant.

Norfolk police are among 20 forces taking part in a national crackdown on the drug producers and called on the public to tip them off about houses which have been given over entirely to growing vast amounts of cannabis.

It emerged today that just last week police raided a three-bedroomed home in St Martin’s Road, Norwich, where they found 400 cannabis plants being grown with a street value of tens of thousands of pounds.

Three Lebanese men were arrested and two have been charged with conspiracy to produce drugs for supply.

As part of the operation, codenamed Atone, police are asking the public to look out for telltale signs of cannabis factories being run from properties in their neighbourhood.

These include the windows of a property being permanently covered, gardening equipment left outside or a pungent smell coming from inside.

Detective Inspector Tony Deacon, of Norfolk police, said: “This is a message going out to the public to give us information on where these premises are being used to cultivate large amounts of cannabis.

“What we are targeting are the people who are more organised in carrying out these criminal activities. The emerging picture coming from the Metropolitan Police are that people are letting premises solely to use to produce cannabis and we are now seeing that picture emerging in Norfolk.

“We have had one or two examples where we have raided places which fit what we are looking for.”

The largest warehouse raided by police contained 20,000 plants worth £8 million.

In recent years there has also been an explosion, particularly in London, of smallscale factories in residential homes, in which many hundreds of plants are grown under intense light powered by electricity illegally and dangerously diverted from the mains supply. There have been a number of fires. This area is dominated by Vietnamese gangsters using illegal “trafficked” workers.

Police identified at least 700 cannabis factories in London alone last year and there is clear evidence that the skunk trade is expanding across the UK, leading to the operation coordinated by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).

Skunk contains far higher quantities of the chemical THC than herbal or resinbased cannabis. In the mid-1990s only around 10 per cent of cannabis in the UK was believed to be skunk.

But the percentage in the last 10 years has spiralled to 60 per cent of the market, a calculation based on police seizures.

The growing consumption of skunk will fuel the debate over whether the decision to downgrade cannabis from a Class B to a Class C narcotic in 2004 was appropriate for a new form of the drug which can be between four and seven time stronger than traditional “dope” - and whether the decision had contributed to the growth of skunk.

Concerns have been raised about the health effects of skunk - particularly in those with some types of mental illness - and its potential to become more of a “gateway” than herbal/resin cannabis to harder drugs.

Gangsters are thought to consider cannabis dealing to be a “lower risk” than dealing in hard drugs but police chiefs argue that cultivating and trafficking cannabis can still attract sentences of up to 14 years. $ATE 3OURCE 4HE 4ELEGRAPH

-ÕëiVÌi`ÊV> >L ÃÊv>VÌ ÀÞÊ Õ V ÛiÀi`Ê Êi>ÃÌÊ i v>ÃÌ

Det Insp Deacon said the information Norfolk police was after from the public for this operation was about the large-scale criminal producers of cannabis, not details of people who just grow one or two plants for their own use.

Police in east Belfast have uncovered a suspected cannabis factory following the search of a property in the area yesterday afternoon.

Posters and postcards were today being distributed around the county urging the public to pass on information about homes given over for cannabis cultivation to the police.

During the raid at the house in the Albertbridge Road area of the city, police recovered 35 mature cannabis plants, and other paraphernalia.

The operation will initially last for two weeks but Det Insp Deacon said it could last longer, depending on the intelligence the police receive.

A 26-year-old man was arrested at the scene for the cultivation of cannabis with intent to supply.

$ATE 3OURCE %VENING .EWS .ORWICH

$ATE 3OURCE .ORTHERN )RELAND .EWS

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iÊ > « À }ÊEÊ `iÊ/Üii`iÊ > iÀ]Ê ÃÌiÀ`> Ê 4EXT BY +RISTIE 3ZALANSKI 0HOTOS BY -ONIQUE *ANSEN

335+ RECENTLY HAD THE PLEASURE OF SPEAKING AND SMOKING WITH 0AUL OWNER OF THE 4WEEDE +AMER AND $AMPKRING TWO BASTIONS IN THE HAZY HISTORY OF !MSTERDAM S COFFEESHOPS )N OUR NEW SERIES ON COFFEESHOP ENTREPRENEURS

335+ DISCUSSES CHANGING #ANNABIS LAWS AND NEW SOCIAL CLIMATES WITHIN THE INDUSTRY 7E ALSO LIKE TO TAKE A LOOK BACK INTO THE HUMBLE ORIGINS OF THE NOW FAMOUS #ANNABIS CAFES

"NEEDDRGNO $MSQDOQDMDTQ R >À ÞÊ >âi In 1985 a star was born. Nestled into a bustling alleyway in one of the more quaint neighbourhoods, the Tweede Kamer introduced a new level of quality into the smoking scene. The shop quickly gained in popularity due to being the first to cut chunks of hash off a fresh block (instead of pre-weighed bags) and allowing customers to purchase small quantities of many different varieties. By January of 1993 a little sister called the Dampkring was on the way, completing the pair. So what made a guy called Paul and his friend Jeroen decide to open a coffeeshop?

Paul: “We started the coffeeshop because of the obvious thing: we are smokers! I was very young then; around 21. Instead of hanging out in a coffeeshop every day, we started thinking, you know, we’d better start our own. It was a very, very small place…. All my friends and relatives said, don’t do it, you know, it’s impossible to make money. So we hired a building….”

Some coffeeshop owners start one up in order to prove their growing prowess, but not Paul. “I was a smoker. I prefer to smoke hash. It took a while to find out about Dutch grass, the Oranje Bud.

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owners are in it for different reasons and that Cannabis is not actually legal in the Netherlands. This means that technically coffeeshop owners are criminals; therefore the mentality behind their business is important to know. What motivates each individual entrepreneur has a direct effect on the quality of their menu. For some it’s money alone; for others, the simple idea of being able to supply their own tastes as well as those of the neighbourhood with reliable products. Paul certainly fits into the latter category.

“You know, I’ve been a smoker for 30 years now, and if it were only about the money, I could sell cars, or houses…!

It was also nice, in the early years, that the people you met were all really nice people. They’re almost all gone, you know, the old hippies, they’re not here anymore. I always felt comfortable with those types of people.”

Ê ÌÌ iÊL> Ê vÊ >Ã Ê} iÃÊ>Ê }ÊÜ>Þ So we know that Paul prefers the scene from “back then,” but what about the smoke? It was primarily the menu that set the Tweede Kamer apart from its competition in the early days, achieving

! LOT OF SMOKERS FROM THE 3TATES OR %NGLAND DON T REALISE THAT COFFEESHOP OWNERS ARE IN IT FOR DIFFERENT REASONS AND THAT #ANNABIS IS NOT ACTUALLY LEGAL IN THE .ETHERLANDS 4HIS MEANS THAT TECHNICALLY COFFEESHOP OWNERS ARE CRIMINALS We sold it for five, six years. We were so successful; the Tweede Kamer was (I think) the most famous coffeeshop in Amsterdam for the locals. So we were ‘living in an ivory tower,’ you know, we didn’t know what was going on around us.”

ii« }ÊÕ«ÊÜ Ì ÊÌ iÊ iÃià Known for their large selection, the Tweede Kamer and Dampkring must have quite a difficult time keeping things interesting. Paul was introduced to the Haze family in the early 90’s, and remembers, “I think it was in ’94 that we heard about a coffeeshop that was selling weed for 18 guilders (€8,20) a gram. The Oranje Bud we were always selling at nine or ten guilders. So we picked up a bag, and that was the first Haze I ever smoked. …That’s how we found out that other people were, you know, also developing their coffeeshop and growing skills! We really had to come out of our ivory tower and realise that there was a

a perfect balance between price and quality. Paul recounts, “The first product that really helped us out was a Moroccan type of hash… they brought it in olive cans, the hash was in a condom, and the shape was a ball, like a big olive. That was quality. Price wise, I think it was the best hash in Amsterdam at the time.

From the moment we sold the “Balletje” (little ball) hash, the Tweede Kamer became famous among the local people.

After a few years, you know, because it was so successful, rival coffeeshops started faking them. You’d get all these different types of Moroccan shaped into a ball, and they’d sell it everywhere as a Balletje.”

ÊvÀ i `ÊÜ Ì ÊÜii`Ê ÃÊ>Ê vÀ i `Ê `ii` We already know how popular the Oranje Bud was, and it was pretty much the second success on the menu at the Tweede Kamer. “It was a very good

4HIS YEAR ) THINK IT WAS *ANUARY OR &EBRUARY

$UTCH COFFEESHOPS EXPERIENCED THE BIGGEST #ANNABIS CRISIS ) VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE ) THINK IT WAS WEEKS THAT THIS JAR WAS EMPTY lot going on in Amsterdam. We saw that the coffeeshop scene was changing, and we weren’t the only ones with quality weed and hash.”

friend of mine who grew it, and this really was a coffeeshop owner’s dream.

In those days everything was being grown in big greenhouses.”

A lot of smokers from the States or England don’t realise that coffeeshop

Remember, these are the days before hydroponic cultivation really took off,

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and much more attention was paid by the average growers to the botanical aspects of the plant. This was well before the time of ample menus and mass production. Back then, the Teede Kamer weed was less profuse than it is now, but even in those days they stocked a wide variety of hash, as it was easier to obtain good quality hash at the time.

How things have changed. Twenty years ago the Tweede Kamer pulled in around 80% of revenue from hash sales and 20% from weed. Two decades was all it took to reverse these numbers, as nowadays buds are in higher demand. Paul fondly recalls his first purchase of Nederwiet, which was gaining popularity in 1985. “I remember when my friend came around the first year with the Oranje Bud, we didn’t take it! It was the only weed we had for a few years…but it was a hit; we had people lining up in front of the Tweede Kamer. We were one of the busiest shops in Amsterdam, with only 24 square metres and one kind of weed [laughs].”

A bit later on he had adopted around four or five types of hash, one or two types of imported weed, and of course the Oranje Bud. “There’s an old photo in the Tweede Kamer from before when we redid the place, of the old weed cans behind the counter. There’s only one can, the Oranje Bud, and a couple of plates with little bits of hash on each one, that was it. Now we’ve got a whole wall!”

It’s evident and just makes sense that menu selections would have increased, but so have the restrictions taking place behind closed doors, away from the red eyes of the smoking public. In the last few years coffeeshop policies have become stricter, and rules that have been in place for ages are now heavily enforced.

,Õ iÃÊ vÊÌ iÊ}> i Coffeeshops are only permitted to operate for three years before needing to reapply for what can loosely be called a “license.” It doesn’t really protect the owners, and many new restrictions have surfaced in the past 18 months. Cannabis cafes may no longer post the trademark weed leaf, either on the walls or on products like filter tips. Coffeeshops are also now forbidden from sponsoring any clubs or sports. The big push right now is to close all coffeeshops which lie within 500metres of a school.

Despite the government’s view of coffeshop owners as criminals, they are subjected to “integrity” policies as well.

Now all potential or current owners must submit to a background check, plus the source of your business investment is investigated. If you own other businesses you must also submit the paperwork from each of those for investigation, and it helps to have a clean history with the tax police. If you have a criminal record, forget it! No coffeeshop for you!

This past summer space milkshakes and chocolates were banned, and cakes are only barely legal; they must contain a description/ disclaimer indicating that they contain THC. These are counted towards the 500g capacity that

where the coffeeshops are pretty much the lowest quality in town. The Tweede Kamer has never had a problem attracting customers, as advertising has always been word of mouth.

The “license” policy that still governs coffeeshops came into effect in 1996.

The murky rules can be clarified by six letters, as coffeeshops are dictated by the “AHOJGV”-rules which set common standards for all Cannabis distributors. These outlaw advertising for the shop, set an 18-year minimum for age, dictate 500g as a capacity limit for the shop and 5g per person per day for purchase, promote zero tolerance for hard drugs, and make sure that the shop isn’t loud, violent, or disruptive to neighbours.

)N THE LAST FEW YEARS COFFEESHOP POLICIES HAVE BECOME STRICTER AND RULES THAT HAVE BEEN IN PLACE FOR AGES ARE NOW HEAVILY ENFORCED

is tolerated on the premises. Insane rules like this make it difficult to run a coffeeshop. Paul suggests kilos instead of 500g, not only because of the irritation of restocking and invoicing, but also because the runners (guys with scooters who replenish the smoke) are now at risk constantly of being cited or arrested for possession of over the tolerated 5g per person. This also creates more drug traffic. “It’s just not workable,” says Paul.

The coffeeshop menu can be displayed on the bar, contrary to what many say in town or have been told, but Jason, the manager of the Dampkring, points out that as long as it’s not visible from the outside of the shop, it’s okay. Often each coffeeshop deals with unique problems as a result of which particular cop is assigned to the neighbourhood.

The Horeca Intervention Team (HIT) once put tape over the lenses of Paul’s security cameras when raiding, which is illegal, in order to protect the identity of their team. Paul does it to protect himself, finding it necessary to keep an eye on customers for several reasons.

It is actually now illegal for customers to be searched in shops (though they must present ID when asked), but they

of the shop during a raid. He explains, “You’re fucked if they find a few grams of coke on the ground, or a few pills,” then adds, “if they really want to go after you, it’s very easy.” The necessity of the security is that should a shop owner ever be closed (which happens immediately) he can then check the cameras to see who brought in the hard drugs. If he can prove the coffeeshop was not involved, he may be reopened.

Regular cafes and pubs don’t have to worry about these raids, where once a year the HIT team show up and twice a year the tax police visit.

The already tricky issue of running a coffeeshop is further complicated when the people who are meant to enforce the laws don’t actually know them very well. Add to that the fact that over the last two years drug laws seem to have changed more than in the ten before that, and Amsterdam gets confusing.

One particularly senseless rule that is now being enforced is that coffeeshops are forbidden from advertising, including putting their address, etc., on packs of roach papers or on lighters. If the shops aren’t clearly denoted, nonsmokers may stumble in accidentally, and dedicated smokers always end

#ANNABIS CAFES MAY NO LONGER POST THE TRADEMARK WEED LEAF EITHER ON THE WALLS OR ON PRODUCTS LIKE FILTER TIPS #OFFEESHOPS ARE ALSO NOW FORBIDDEN FROM SPONSORING ANY CLUBS OR SPORTS 4HE BIG PUSH RIGHT NOW IS TO CLOSE ALL COFFEESHOPS WHICH LIE WITHIN METRES OF A SCHOOL don’t know this and often empty their pockets of contraband onto the floor

up right out of Central Station and wandering into the Red Light District,

iÊ>Ê} `Ê i } L ÕÀ Luckily, Paul has maintained good relations with his neighbours, but it wasn’t always easy. “When we opened we told the whole neighbourhood that we were gonna be a lunchroom. In the beginning we sold sandwiches.

[Laughs] For the first few months we even had lots of old ladies coming in!

You know, they had seen a new shop, it looked nice, and they stopped by for a sandwich!

“We opened the Tweede Kamer in a very traditional, classical area… we had the Landskroon Bakery on the corner who created the space cake recipe for the shop. The old owner was from Austria and was really a Christian conservative type of guy, his wife, too. They didn’t really like the whole hashish thing on the street. Every time I parked my car on the bridge, he called the cops, things like that.” Things changed when Paul’s sister-in-law saw the old guy exiting one of the ladies’ windows in the Red Light District one day. “So we went to the bakery the next day, you know, ordered some nice cakes, and then we asked him, ‘Hey, did you have a good time yesterday?’ And after that he never bothered us again!

“But we had good relations with our neighbours; there’s a Dutch saying that it’s better to have a good neighbour than a faraway friend. So we kept the street clean and swept, and asked the guys with the scooters not to come into the alley, no one hung out in front of the door, you know, smoking joints.

Through the years they all found out that we’re all nice guys, we never had trouble with the police.”

À iÊ` iÃÊ«>ÞÊ­Ì>Ýiî Responsible and respectable business owners like Paul are marginalised into a criminal category because of the product they sell. The Dutch government has no problem collecting taxes from these people, yet the livelihood of coffeeshop owners hangs by a thread each day. As if that weren’t enough, there is a certain amount of hypocrisy in place within the drug legislation. Coffeeshops are judged by different standards than other drug distributors. In pubs and cafes, customers are not submitted to checks and the cafes themselves are not raided in search of hard drugs.

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There is little evidence to support the idea that the War on Drugs is effective.

In fact prohibition creates criminals, and things are no different in the Netherlands. Paul has seen the negative impact of punitive drug laws. “There are so many small home growers who get busted, everybody is scared; you get kicked out of your house, you have to pay the electricity bills and fines, the tax people come, and you lose your social security. So a lot of good people, the people who just want a single room, don’t dare to grow anymore, so the criminals come in. The policy makers in the Netherlands are creating more criminals. Also, the quality goes down.

And those criminals in Holland, you know, they could rob a bank, but they’d go to jail for eight years. They could deal cocaine or heroin, but they’re going to jail for eight years. They all want to grow because the penalties are not that high. It’s an easy choice.”

Penalties might not be that bad, but it’s much easier to get caught than it used to be thanks to a special group of privatised police intended solely to bust grow spaces. Known as “SEON,” this band of ex-cops get paid to find and destroy grow rooms. This all started around 18 months ago, and can be viewed as a sort of private DEA. From January through April of this year they closed down more grow rooms than during the whole of 2005.

Since the “back door” of the coffeeshops is unregulated, it’s much easier for the growers to indulge in criminal behaviour, while the “front door” of the shop is so carefully watched. It’s resulted in a policy that was birthed in June of last year, the famous ‘cannabis letter’ from Minister of Justice Donner in which he talked about going after the growers as a priority. In fact, many growers abroad would be shocked to learn just how often Dutch growers are busted, fined, arrested, etc. The result is that modern Dutch Cannabis has become massproduced and low average quality, so it

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is important to protect businesses like the Tweede Kamer and Dampkring, who insist on high standards. The major weed supply had been driven indoors and overall quality plummeted when the old-school greenhouses went down by the early 90’s.

Àii ÕÃiÊivviVÌ Paul wistfully recalls the difference in the products of the early days, “We had become so dependent on Oranje Bud, like I said; it was a coffeeshop owner’s dream. All grown in greenhouses, all biological, packed in 500g bags and perfectly dried. He had a greenhouse, and they grew hundreds of kilos a year.

It was perfect, and then they got busted a few years later.” This was one of the final nails in the coffin of the original Dutch weed.

“The last one that got busted was a huge one; it made the front page of De Telegraaf (Holland’s biggest newspaper –ed). The bust was about seven football fields of greenhouses, and it was the end of that group of people because they had already had a big bust the year before. We were so dependent on that Oranje Bud, and we never thought about what would happen if it was gone.

So then we really had a problem. We had to find other types of weed; we got in a little low spot.”

Luckily, when you have such a good and long-standing reputation in the Cannabis industry, it’s usually not difficult to find new growers. Paul agrees. “We’ve never had too much trouble with that,” he claims. “It’s difficult to make contacts with new growers because of the risk. But you never know when you’ll need them. I have this big glass jar in the office for samples, and it’s never empty. This year, I think it was January or February, Dutch coffeeshops experienced the biggest Cannabis crisis I’ve ever seen in my life. I think it was weeks that this jar was empty. That really gives me the sign that something is going on out there.”

That “something” is a result of what Paul calls “a whole movement in the Western World,” the global War on Drugs. In the last three years, the Christian Right has made its presence known through conservative drug legislation. Some would call it American influence in the Netherlands, but it’s also Minister Donner who seems to have a major beef with the coffeeshop scene in general. With prohibition comes hypocrisy: back in 2001 the Tweede Kamer was penalised due to having an underage tourist (by one month) in the shop. It was enough to close the coffeeshop for a week, which Paul found unnecessarily harmful to their revenue. This was the first time he’d ever felt like quitting the industry.

As he suggests, why not apply the same standards for anyone who sells drugs, legal or otherwise? With regards to underage teens shoplifting alcohol from supermarkets, if one gets into drunken trouble, a week’s closure should also apply. “If you do it to me, you also have to do it to the supermarket,” Paul insists.

iVÌ iiÀ } If the conservatives are re-elected in November, as Paul says, Dutch coffeeshops are “in trouble. No matter how legal we coffeeshop owners keep things, we always run the risk of being closed down and it’s very frustrating.

As of 1 April 2007, there will be no alcohol in coffeeshops anymore, and it doesn’t make sense. Paul contacted the GGD (Health Board) to find out about any complaints filed or accidents as a result of combining the two drugs, and there were none. As far as he is concerned, “If we end up with the same government next time, we’re screwed. The CDA [Christian Democrats] are promoting a ‘zero option,’ meaning they’re working towards no coffeeshops at all…” although there is a rumour circulating that the Amsterdam mayor suggests around 200 would be sensible for a small city like ours.

)T IS ACTUALLY NOW ILLEGAL FOR CUSTOMERS TO BE SEARCHED IN SHOPS THOUGH THEY MUST PRESENT )$ WHEN ASKED BUT THEY DON T KNOW THIS AND OFTEN EMPTY THEIR POCKETS OF CONTRABAND ONTO THE FLOOR OF THE SHOP DURING A RAID

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ÜÜÜ°Ã vÌÃiVÀiÌð 0RINT IT AND YOU LL KNOW IT 3OFT 3ECRETS 5+ ESSENTIAL READING FOR "RITAIN S GROWERS TOKERS AND CANNABUSINESSES

>V ÊÌ ÊÌ iÊvÕÌÕÀi If the growers became regulated and licensed, it would greatly improve the overall quality of the smoke in town. Locally, in major cities around the Netherlands, there is space to experiment with “back door” policies, but Donner threatens to bring in the Justice Department. Benefits include less stolen electricity, more focus on organics, health and the environment (radioactivity and heavy metals in nutrients, how to safely dispose of growing products, etc.) A few shop owners do provide their customers honestly with great smoke for great prices, and they’re still considered criminals and threatened with the Justice Department. “It would be a good thing if we could figure out a way to mainstream coffeeshops as businesses, instead of just places where drugs are sold.”

We have to wonder, how will the alcohol- (2007) and tobacco (2009) ban affect coffeeshops? In fact, coffeeshops could be the answer. That way, the only people exposing themselves to the smoke are the ones who actually wish to inhale it. Ten years ago there were around 1500 shops, and now there are about 700.

Paul reminds us that this does not mean there are fewer smokers; in fact, there are likely far more now than a decade ago. Who knows what the future holds for Dutch coffeeshops? In the meantime, stop by the Dampkring or Tweede Kamer the next time you’re in Amsterdam; they’ll keep you informed.

It’s not just because we all like to smoke that we don’t want to see the coffeeshops disappear. As Paul points out, perhaps one of the most important social aspects of Cannabis is that it promotes social discussion and integration. It would be a shame to see even more restrictions placed upon a plant that has brought people together for thousands of years, especially in a “tolerant” country such as the Netherlands.

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WECKELS WORLD OF

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WONDERS "Y 7ECKELS THE GROW SPECIALIST FROM !TAMI

/UTDOOR GROWING n INDOOR BLOOMING PART /NCE THEY RE INDOORS AND UNDER LAMPS 4HOSE OF YOU WHO THOUGHT THAT 7ECKELS 7ORLD OF 7ONDERS OUTDOOR ONLY LOOKED AT ISSUES REGARDING OUTDOOR GROWING HAVE A FALSE IMPRESSION &ROM THIS ARTICLE PART ONWARDS ) SHALL BE DEALING WITH THE GROWING OF MARIHUANA UNDER ARTIFICIAL LIGHT INDOOR GROWING SINCE AFTER ALL WE ARE LOOKING AT LETTING OUR PLANTS BLOOM INDOORS "UT NEVER FEAR THIS DOES NOT MEAN WE ARE COMING TO THE END OF THE ARTICLES DEVOTED TO OUTDOOR GROWING &ANS OF THE GREAT OUTDOOR CAN REST ASSURED THAT THERE WILL PLENTY MORE LOVELY ARTICLES ON THE WAY WITH WHICH ) WILL BE AIMING TO HELP YOU GET THE MOST OUT OF YOUR PATCH OF SOIL

(ERE YOU CAN SEE ALL FIVE PLANTS STOOD NEXT TO EACH OTHER 'IVEN THEIR SIZE WE HAVE CHOSEN TO STICK THE PLANTS STRAIGHT IN TO BLOOM RIGHT FROM THE START

!FTER ABOUT WEEK AND A HALF YOU CAN CLEARLY SEE FROM THE PLANTS AND THE STATE OF THEIR LEAVES THAT THE BLOOM HORMONES HAVE BEGUN TO DO THEIR WORK ON THE PLANTS

In the previous article in this series we saw how we could safely and securely transport our plants to their indoor space.

In this article we will be looking at how the lives of these plants are progressing and how we can best tailor conditions to their needs. Growing indoors often demands a bit more experience from the grower, or in any case a bit more technical skill and with it a reasonable level of insight. As a indoor grower you will often be called upon to take account of a number of (new) factors. How many lamps can I safely place in my grow room? What is the maximum height I should allow my plants to reach in order that they still have some leeway under the lamps? How do I best look after the air circulation? These are all important aspects that help determine a successful crop of indoor marihuana, aspects that during the growing cycle we have to have a firm grip of in order to maximise the living conditions under artificial light. In coming articles I will be paying attention to these and all the other important issues.

are going to suffer any deficiency of feed water. If you choose to go down this route, take care over the amount of (feed) water that you program the plants to be given.

To prevent your dishes overflowing it might be a good idea to give the plants smaller amounts of water, more times a day, rather than giving them one huge dose all in one go.

But first I would like to return briefly to the outdoor plants that we have now moved into their indoor space. Since we will need to provide the plants with large volumes of water once they come indoors, it is a good idea to place the large flower pots with the plants in them onto large dishes. These dishes are available from pretty much all garden centres and grow shops, and are very practical for our plants. Preferably you

should buy as large dishes as you can, so that they can hold more than enough feed water. This is pretty useful, because otherwise the dishes would run the risk of overflowing every time you watered the plants, which in turn means having to mop up after each watering too, with all the hassle that entails. What’s more, a larger sized dish offers the possibility of keeping a close eye on the water that overflows with the aid of an ec meter.

But this is something I will be going in to in greater detail in a later article.

So each pot with a marihuana plant in it is stood in a single large dish. In this way we can easily provide the plants with large volumes of water, without most of it streaming away immediately (because a large amount remains behind and available to the plant in the dish).

The high quantities of light and the high temperature ensure that the White Shark plants use an amazingly large amount of feed water. This is something as growers we need to keep firmly in mind, because an indoor plant under artificial light that suffers a shortage of water (and thereby also of liquid nutrients and stimulators), will have much more trouble achieving a big harvest than a plant that has been richly provided with plenty of nutrientrich moisture.

Given this reality it is perhaps handy to look into having automatic irrigation, so that we can also take the odd day or two off without having to worry that the plants

Because we will be visiting our growing space every day, we can choose in this grow to give the plants water by hand. It is perhaps a little more work, but we do keep everything under our own close control and we can therefore offer our plants maximum care. Rather than schlepping everything around in a bucket, we can place a feed water vat in the grow space with a submersible pump and a smaller circulation pump inside it. The circulation pump makes sure that the nutrients, the stimulators and the water are well and truly mixed and stay mixed with each other. If we did not do this then the liquid nutrients could run the risk of settling at the bottom of the vat and concentrating themselves around the submerged pump (which is at the bottom of the vat). What would then happen, I think every grower can well imagine. When the submerged pump was switched on the plants would be inundated with much too high a concentration of nutrients and stimulators.

In short, the nutrients and stimulators are not well dispersed throughout the water.

If you still decide that you don’t want to use a small circulation pump, of course

you always decide to just give the vat a thorough stirring with a bamboo pole or something like that, so that the nutrients, stimulators and the water are still well mixed, whereupon we can safely use the submerged pump.

In our grow space the submerged pump pumps the feed water (water with liquid nutrient and stimulators mixed with it) through a garden hose when it is switched on. The hose then runs from pot to pot and is secured to each plant’s main stem, so that it can not flap around.

In the hose there are holes punched where it passes over each flower pot, so that the feed water can easily flow out. So we only have to switch on the submerged pump and each plant is provided with everything it needs.

We do still need to pay attention to ensuring that the plants have used more or less all the fertilisers from the soil they were growing in, since the plants have had a good length of time in pre-growth.

It is therefore very important that in any case we provide the plants with liquid nutrients (eventually supplemented with extra stimulators), so that the plants do not become deficient in anything. Our earth mixture did contain some substances that only become available to the plant after a certain period of time has passed (such as the bone meal for example), so we need to avoid washing away the earth as much as we can. Also make sure that the dishes are not allowed to stand filled

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!FTER THE PLANTS HAVE BEEN IN BLOOM FOR ABOUT TWO WEEKS THE FIRST FLOWER HEADS WILL START TO BECOME VISIBLE ON THEM

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4HE PLANT IS NOW MAKING LITTLE FLOWER HEADS ON EACH BUD

! 7HITE 3HARK BUD JUST AS SHE INNOCENTLY STARTS TO BLOOM

with water continuously, as this will limit the amount of oxygen that can get to the roots, and that would be a great shame since as you know, plenty of oxygen is a vital ingredient in keeping a root system healthy.

One other important point is that the feed water that is left standing in the dishes sometimes can have a very different concentration of nutrients in it. This is because the plant has already extracted the nutrients she most needs as the water made its way through the substrate in the pot.

The remaining unused nutrients are those that our green lady has allowed to flow away. For this reason I usually remove the excess feed water when the plant has not soaked it up after two or three hours.

/ iÊ } ÌÊVÞV iÊÕ `iÀÊÊ >ÀÌ v V > Ê } Ì The composition of the feed water is completely dependent on how we plan to let the plants keep growing indoors. For having female plants do their blooming indoors there are two possibilities. We can provide the plants directly with a 12hour light cycle from the moment they are put under lamps, thanks to which they immediately start to bloom. Or we can prolong the growth period of the plants indoors, by putting them into an 18-hour cycle (with the aid of a timer). By using

this latter method we can prolong the growing period of the plant in such a way that the plant, after she has already spent some time outdoors, is given a extra helping of energy, as it were.

The plant saves some of the energy during both grow phases and so will have an enormous amount of energy for use during the bloom period for making flower heads with. So much that it is fair to say that there is no other growing technique that can compete with this one.

Of course, to use it you do need to be in possession of a growing space of gigantic proportions, one that can take plants raised outside and put under lamps to achieve (even) more growth. The plants will have already reached a pretty decent size outside and once indoors under artificial light, provided with conditions as near to paradise as they could want, they will go on to achieve unimaginable dimensions.

So as growers we first need to make the decision as to whether we let the plants bloom immediately or whether to prolong the growth period. Once we have made that decision, then we know what the right nutrients and stimulators we will need to add to the water for the job are, so that the plants are provided with all the necessary nutrients.

If we choose to let the plants grow for a while longer, then I just add a liquid

nutrient to the water. Sometimes I also add a little root stimulator, so that the roots can continue to develop a bit more. A root stimulator also frequently provides for an optimal soil life, and that is something all growers are striving for. After all, you want the plants to be able to absorb the nutrients as well as possible. The basic nutrient consists in most commercial varieties of an A and B nutritional component. With feeds such as these you can only mix the A component to the B feed, after the feed water vat is more or less filled with water. But just to be on the safe side, you can always check the label carefully. Other (liquid) nutrient brands employ an all-in-one nutrient, and these are also known as complete or total nutrients. As a grower it is just a question of trying for yourself and seeing what you get the best results with.

Once we have put the plants in to bloom, or if we plan to immediately put them in to bloom, we bring the number of hours’ daylight they are given back down to 12. It is a good idea to take a number of cuttings from each plant before we put the mother plants in to bloom. Number the pots that you put the cuttings in to, so that we can always tell from which mother plant each cutting came from. The cuttings are put in a separate room, for example in a small cupboard, under fluorescent lamps.

Should in the meantime one of the mother plants develop in to a real cracking plant, with loads of good characteristics like lovely white buds, sturdy side branching, a gorgeous green leaf cover and a good yield, then we can use her clone to grow further indoor crops from. If you forget, you would not be the first grower to have allowed a fantastic mother plant to bloom and then realise he had no way of getting clones from her. The consequence is a great end result, but one that cannot be followed through because the mother plant has left no descendants in the form of clones with which to carry on her line. A few growers I know have managed to keep a plant alive after harvesting it by then perking it up with some extra light and thereby getting her back into the growth phase. Such a method requires a lot of time and patience from the grower and is still far from an ideal solution. We are far better off thinking ahead a little and taking clones from each mother plant before we set them in to bloom. It will save us a load of hassle, and who knows, even drop your very own ‘super race’ in to your hands!

To come back to the issue of light hours.

In considering the number of hours that you plan to give your plants each day, you must take good account of the conditions outdoors. Besides the fact that during the night electricity is cheaper to use (for the growers among you who pay for their electricity), there is also the fact that in summer especially, it is easier to keep the temperature in our grow room constant (ideally between 24 and 27 °C), than if we let the lamps shine during the day.

Particularly if we are growing in the attic or in a shed, when the sun shines pretty much directly on the grow space, then the sun can be a really annoying factor due to its ability to raise the temperature in the grow space considerably.

This problem we can largely eliminate by allowing the lamps to burn at night.

The difference between day- and night-

4HREATENING TO WREAK HAVOC THERE APPEAR TO BE A COUPLE OF MALES AMONG OUR PLANTS 7E HAVE REMOVED THEM IMMEDIATELY )N RETROSPECT THIS COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED "UT GROWERS SOMETIMES DO WANT TO BE STUBBORN AND THIS IS AN ATTITUDE THAT CAN SOMETIMES LEAD TO PROBLEMS

!FTER WE HAVE REMOVED THE MALE PLANTS WE ARE LEFT WITH THREE REMAINING 4HESE NOW HAVE MUCH MORE ROOM AND THAT WILL BE TO THE BENEFIT THEIR DEVELOPMENT

3INCE WE NOW HAVE MORE SPACE AVAILABLE THE PLANTS CAN BE MORE EASILY PLACED IN THE MIDDLE UNDER THE LAMPS 3O WE NO LONGER HAVE ANY TROUBLE WITH CRAMPED CONDITIONS UNDER THE SLANTING ROOF (OWEVER FOR A GOOD SPREAD OF LIGHT WE MAY WELL NEED TO REPOSITION THE LAMPS

/N THE UNDERSIDE IS CLEARLY VISIBLE HOW WE HAVE POSITIONED THE IRRIGATION SYSTEM IN THE FORM OF A HOSE THAT IS CONNECTED TO THE SUBMERGED PUMP

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4HE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FLOWER HEADS IS STILL EXASPERATINGLY SLOW 4HIS IS ACTUALLY ONE OF THE PROPERTIES OF THE 7HITE 3HARK PLANT SHE STARTS OUT BLOOMING VERY SLOWLY

time temperature outdoors in the summer months can easily be 15 °C. This can contribute considerably to the level of the temperature indoors, and so the plants will thank us for choosing to let the lamps do their work at night (so that we can with a bit of luck keep the temperature indoors below 30 °C), rather than during the day.

Sometimes the heat just cannot be beaten in any way, which leaves us no other option than to remove one of the lamps from our grow room and/or grow at half power. A few people do try to slow the rising temperature by getting themselves an air conditioner. Besides their huge energy use (something that is not always an option because the grow space is maxed-out already in its energy use), their cooling capacity is often not sufficient to suppress the heat. During the months of summer it therefore only remains for the majority of growers to just make the best of it, although there are always a few handy growers who manage to cobble something creative together to help them keep the temperature under control.

iÀÌ ÃiÀÃ

! 7HITE 3HARK BUD UP CLOSE 4HE PLANT HAS NOW BEEN BLOOMING FOR ABOUT FOUR WEEKS

When the bloom period takes off – or we as growers allow the bloom period to begin - (since it now us who control the interior conditions), this has an immediate impact on the fertilisers we have to add to the feed water. Given that the bloom period for the majority of growers is the most important period of the whole grow cycle (since it is here that the financial gains are to be made), it is now that the plants themselves need more and more extra (supplementary) fertilisers. In particular, the plants during this period have a great(er) need for phosphorus. This is something we have to pay attention to and therefore from now on we have to add bloom feed as well as the nutrient base to the feed water. We can also decide to add at this stage some extra bloom stimulator to help the plants (as well as us growers) go totally crazy. I personally, along with many other growers, opt to use in addition a PK 13-14 for that little bit extra. PK 13-14 is actually nothing more than a high quality, pure and natural phosphorus and potassium preparation. It ensures a healthy root growth, stimulates the plants’ readiness for blooming as well as stimulating an exuberant bloom. They are all tricks for powering things up a bit or get the buds to develop that extra bit of plumpness.

/NE WEEK FURTHER ON AND THE BUDS ARE GETTING BIGGER BY THE DAY

Make sure that when you use PK 13-14 you use a bit of caution. Start with a really low dosage (= 2.5 ml per 10 litres of water), and then build it up really slowly, and this will usually give you good results.

There are growers who already start getting their plants used to the PK 13-14 a week (sometimes even earlier) before the bloom period, by starting to add it to the feed water a week (or more) before the commencement of the bloom period.

Especially for growers of short-blooming varieties (such as for example Top 44), these tricks have the effect of making sure that the optimum quantities of PK 13-14 are given to their green ladies. They are aiming in any case to be able to give the maximum dose of PK 13-14 to their plants (= usually about 15 ml per 10 litres of water) before the bloom period comes to an end. The fact is that one variety of marihuana plant can handle a considerably

!FTER ABOUT A MONTH THE WHOLE SPACE IS PACKED WITH BLOOMING PLANTS ON WHICH THE BUDS ARE RAPIDLY BEGINNING TO DEVELOP

higher dose of PK 13-14 than the other variety. But actually, this goes for every type of nutrient and stimulator that we add to the water. It is important as a grower to keep a close eye on the plants and observe whether they have everything just right for their specific needs. When we set to work carefully and don’t do anything crazy (like suddenly whacking up the dosage of nutrients given), then the plants will develop just fine and the bloom period will proceed successfully.

In order to make the feed water for the plants that little bit more attractive, we can also make sure that the temperature of the feed water is kept around 21 °C. This is the most ideal temperature for keeping the marihuana plant happy and for them to easily and above all optimally take up their nutrients and stimulators and make use of them. As long as the substrate (the soil mix in which the roots are anchored) is warmed up a little so that the feed water has a temperature of around 21 °C, then the whole process will work out very well for the plant. Growers who pay attention to this final detail will enjoy an advantage over those colleagues who just chuck cold water over their plants. Cold water has the effect of slowing things down and can even put the plants under sever stress, if the temperature of the feed water has too great a difference from the ambient grow room temperature (which is much higher).

The plants that I grew for this ‘grow outside - bloom inside’ experiment were raised in such a way that they were able to be put straight in to bloom. Letting the plants continue with pre-growth did not make any sense. To put it more strongly, the plants might even have been damaged by doing so. We already have enough trouble getting the plants to fit under the lamps with a reasonable degree of safety.

Even so, during the first weeks of the bloom period they did manage to cause a (small) drama. There were apparently a couple of males lurking among the five well-developed plants. This could have been avoided by taking clones from each individual in advance and putting them into bloom, as I have described in previous articles. I myself was almost convinced that I had all females, and five colleagues I’ve worked with for years were equally convinced. But the stubbornness of growers is often punished, and that was the case here. A small silver lining from this event was that the other three plants (and these were the loveliest of ladies) now had all the space they could possibly want for developing huge buds. In the following article we will have a look at how the bloom period of White Shark progresses and what possible problems we might expect to have to deal with.

$ESPITE THE FACT THAT THE 7HITE 3HARK HAS ONLY JUST STARTED TO BLOOM SHE HAS ALREADY STARTED TO MAKE GREAT AMOUNTS OF 4(# CRYSTALS 4HE BUDS ALSO NOW START TO GET QUITE A BIT FATTER AND STRONGER TASTIER TO SMELL

&OUR LOVELY BUDS IN A ROW )F YOU BEAR IN MIND THAT THE BLOOM PERIOD IS ONLY AROUND HALF WAY THROUGH THESE PROMISE TO PRODUCE A WHOLE LOAD MORE PLEASURE BEFORE THEY RE DONE

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3OFT 3ECRETS

ANNJR

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* Ü`iÀÊ7>ÀÃ À> > Ê Ã Ê­ > ÃÌÀi> Ê*ÕL Ã }® Powder Wars is the true story of the supergrass who brought down Britain’s biggest drug dealers.

Gangster Paul Grimes was a one-man crimewave with a breathtaking capacity to steal. Any villains who got in his way were made to pay - often with their blood. But when his son died of a drugs overdose, the old-school mobster swore revenge on the new generation of Liverpool-based heroin and cocaine dealers. Against all odds, he turned undercover informant.

V Þ / ÞÊ >À iÃÊ­ Ê Ã® At eleven he was stealing cars. At fifteen he was beating up policemen. At twenty he was an armed robber. And by thirty, Curtis Warren was the biggest drugs dealer in Britain. Curtis Warren is the richest and most successful British criminal ever to be caught. He had a hotline to the Columbian Cali cartel, direct links with the Turkish heroin Maffya, and unlimited credit with the cannabis dealers of Europe and Africa. He organised shipments worth hundreds of millions of pounds and had a small army of violent soldiers prepared to do his bidding. His power was such that he was able to control the price of drugs on Britain’s streets. And he did it all with a mobile phone, a photographic memory and an extraordinary criminal mind. COCKY

ÀÊ >ÃÌÞÊ

> iÀ Ê7 ÌiÊ­ > ÃÌÀi> Ê*ÕL Ã }® “Mr Nasty” charts the rise, fall and ultimate redemption of a wannabe player in the global narcotics business. From humble beginnings on the streets of London’s East End, Cameron White rapidly ascended the drug ladder of London’s club scene before notorious local criminals forced him to move to the US. There, he soon found himself aboard a cocaine-fuelled rollercoaster ride, leading him from encounters with psychotic, crack-dealing Jamaicans in New York

7 ÌiÊ `Ê Õ}i iÊ ÃÌi Ê­ > ÃÌÀi> Ê*ÕL Ã }® “Three fishermen from the Scottish Highlands received a total of 55 years in prison after being found guilty of smuggling into Britain cocaine worth more than 100 million - the biggest drugs seizure by customs officials in the country’s history” - The Times.

Throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, the Highland fishing village of Ullapool was a tough place to make a living. With huge Eastern bloc factory ships buying up the local catch, however, there was money to be made for those who had the stomach for it. Renowned for its lawlessness - drinking and fighting offered the Fridaynight entertainment - it was no place for the squeamish. One man was gaining quite a reputation for himself locally - Chris Howarth, known to everyone as ‘Crazy Chris’. In the summer of ‘89, he met an expatriate Scot living in Malaga (referred to as ‘Mr X’ in the subsequent trial) who offered him some work of a dubious nature and set in motion a chain of events that would lead to what would be the UK’s largest ever drugs haul. Around the same time, working on a tip-off from a local informant and intelligence from their Spanish counterparts,

}}ÃÊ£ ÊÊ i Ê,Õ}LÞÊ­/ iÊ7>À iÀÊ*>«iÀL>V î ‘Protected Witness Unit (PWU): Designed to hold prisoners who are giving evidence or assistance to the police in cases of serious crime. All inmates are known to staff simply as ‘Bloggs’ followed by a number...’ In December 1995, the bodies of three men were discovered

The first gangster to fall foul of Grimes’s change of heart was Curtis Warren, aka ‘Cocky’, the wealthiest and most successful criminal in British history. Grimes infiltrated his cocaine cartel and led Customs to the largest narcotics seizure on record, putting Warren in the dock in the drugs trial of the twentieth century. After turning his attention to heroin baron John Haase, Grimes rose to become the boss of the villain’s notoriously bloodthirsty ‘security firm’ - a professional gang of rapid-fire, round-the-clock racketeers addicted to cocaine, explosive violence and non-stop criminality. His crew would fight gun-slinging turf wars with rival door teams, kidnap drug dealers and broker the sale of swag - lorry loads of stolen whisky and designer sportswear worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. Finally, as his net began to tighten, Grimes was confronted with the ultimate dilemma. He discovered his second son was now a rising star in the drugs business.

Should he shop him or not, was the life-or-death question. “Powder Wars” also reveals the secrets behind one of the most controversial episodes in British judicial history - how former Home Secretary Michael Howard was duped into granting John Haase a Royal Pardon, a decision that has come back to haunt the Tory leader.

has been extensively revised and updated to tell the amazing story of the rise and fall of Curtis Warren. To catch him, police and Customs officials throughout Europe set up Operation Crayfish, a unique operation, putting together a hand-picked team working from a secret location. In doing so they stumbled across police corruption at the highest level, walked smack into a bloody gang war, and uncovered an organised crime network linking the whole of the British Isles. Finally, Warren was caught in an SAS-style raid by Dutch police. Today, he is serving a twelve year jail sentence under maximum security. One of his gang has already escaped, and he has murdered one of the inmates..

to luncheons with Hollywood’s glitterati. The American adventure was to reach its inevitable conclusion in a drive-by shooting in the barrios of LA. Back in London, a dull nine-to-five existence did nothing to quell White’s inclinations. Cue a chemical vacation in Thailand and an effortless metamorphosis from recreational drug user to fully fledged smack addict in Berlin. White’s eventual wake-up call came one morning via his ravaged reflection in the mirror. Stunned to realise how low he had sunk, White was determined to get clean and his gold-star efforts at rehabilitation were rewarded with an opportunity to start again in Australia.

Faced with temptation again, his good intentions were to prove short-lived and he slid into the murky world of substance abuse in Sydney. But this time things were different and a gradual but life-defining epiphany rescued White from the edge. “Mr Nasty” is a thrilling yet cautionary tale of a decade lived within the narcotics underworld. Illuminating both the exciting and destructive sides of such an existence, it is ultimately a testament to how a strong will can sometimes overcome the lure of vice and break the chains of addiction.

Customs and Excise became aware of a major plot to smuggle huge amounts of drugs into the UK around Ullapool. As a result of this information, Operation Klondyke was born. For the next 18 months, Howarth and Mr X would be under constant surveillance. The trail would lead from Ullapool and the east coast of Scotland to the Costa del Sol, Gibraltar and Venezuela. It would uncover distribution channels from Colombia’s notorious Cali cartel to Europe and North America, operated by ruthless Spanish smuggling outfits. And it would finally lead to the UK’s most valuable seizure of drugs on a Scottish road as it was being transported down to the lucrative London market - half a tonne of virtually pure Colombian cocaine.

“White Gold” at last tells the inside story of Operation Klondyke - seen through the eyes of both the hunters and the hunted.

in a Range Rover in a quiet country lane in the Essex village of Rettendon. All three were well-known villains, and had each been blasted in the head with a shotgun at point-blank range. One member of the gang decided to break ranks and tell all. The story Darren Nicholls told, at first, seemed too incredible to be believed. But as the evidence to support his version of events began to mount up, the motives behind the brutal murder became increasingly clear. The plot Nicholls eventually uncovered involved everything from Irish terror groups and European smuggling rings to prostitution and police corruption. Bloggs 19 chronicles the rise of some of Britain’s most powerful and notorious villains and of the man whose betrayal led to their downfall - arguably the most important supergrass since the time of the Kray Twins.

(MSDQM@SHNM@ K &QNVDQR

3OFT 3ECRETS

a workman and asked him if him and his mates wanted some pints after work in exchange for the boxes they were removing. For £20 the bloke dropped 8x 400watt-ballast units (including bulbs) at my front door. Now I had enough light to start running some experiments. The glass fronts on the boxes meant that I could get them really close to the plants.

At this point I focused my gardening attention helping some old friends. They were growing a commercial crop of ‘Big Bud’ (in an amateur setting) at the time, using clay-pebbles/hydro-balls. During this whole episode I took a backseat in things.

It worked out ok, but I was learning from someone else’s mistakes, rather my own.”

ÃÌ> ià “You learn better when the mistakes you are making are yours. So long as you learn its all the same thing I suppose, but always try to apply what you are learning to your plants. This way you’ll always be learning something new all the way up to your’ last days of growing.

- ÛiÀÊ > ÞÝÊqÊ ` ÀÊ >À`i }Ê ÊÌ iÊ1 Ê Ê "Y ,AZYSTRAIN

Once upon a time, cannabis growing in the UK was a hobby restricted to the outdoor “gardening community”.

Nowadays it is possible that almost anyone is capable of cultivating his or her own cannabis indoors. All said, it’s not always possible to draw a clear division between ‘cultivator’ and ‘gardener’, the line between is sometimes thin. Some of the best gardeners don’t cultivate, while some of the best cultivators’ sometimes garden.

Soft Secrets then arranged to interview a gardener in the UK that chooses to cultivate cannabis indoors.

Silver Calyx is a dedicated enthusiast of cannabis culture from root to flower.

He also likes to grow species suited to neutral rainwater, because he’s an ecologist at heart. Mind-you, mention the word “bubble-hash” and his ears stand to alert. Silver Calyx’s “mumble-crumble” has been known to,,, well make people mumble, well into the early hours of the morning. To find out how he magic’s the hash from the plants he so obviously loves, we did a pen to paper and listened for a change rather than talked.

Silver Calyx: “I started growing cannabis plants as a teenager. My first experiments were with ‘Pet City’ hemp seed. I’d go down to the pet store, grab a handful of bird feed, pick out the cannabis seeds, and then plant them into some fresh soil. This is how I first learnt how to grow weed plants. At one stage me and my buddy had 100+ hemp-city seedlings growing under a bunk bed using fluorescent lights. One

of these seedlings, I remember, turned into a really nice plant, since we nurtured it like one of our own. At this point we only smoked hashish on bong so finding nice seeds to plant wasn’t always easy.

Then one-day I collected some bag-seed from some S. Indian weed that a local dealer was smoking. An Indian plant was raised in ‘Miracle Grow’ soil outside, and bought into a greenhouse at night for safekeeping, and to maintain temps.

It grew so big that a relative had to chop the plant in half while I was on holiday, to keep it low-down. It grew taller than me in the end, and yielded about 2 oz by harvest. At this point I went out and bought the ‘Marijuana Grower’s Guide’

by Mel Franks. This helped me get used to different types of cannabis and instructed me on how best to grow plants in different places. I ended up swapping/ loaning the book to another dude for a packet of ‘Misty’ seeds from Homegrown Fantaseeds. Then, one-day, I saw a flyer for a local hydro-shop. I visited the shop the same day and came home with an Aqua-farm grow pot, a 400w lamp system and a bottle of PK13/14. Into this system I placed one lone ‘Misty’ seedling and watched it grow.

My second grow and harvest had been a total success. So I went out and bought a GT205 NFT tray and started making cuttings from the remaining ‘Misty’ seedlings I’d grown. Then, one day while out walking, I noticed a petrol station was being demolished. On the forecourt lay several light units. I whistled over

After a short period of dormancy, the opportunity became available for me to apply my own skills to my own plants in my own space once again. My passion for gardening never dwindled during this time, circumstance just meant that my own grow-project wasn’t possible. Soon enough I came across some ‘Haze#19’ seed and some ‘Jack Herer’ bag-seeds that seemed worth keeping. I started the next round of planting. The surviving Haze#19 plant turned out to be male in flower. But the Jack Herer where all female. So I made some clones from a mother I kept back. Since this I have experimented with different strains from different growers and breeders from seed and clone. If I find something I like the look of I make clones from it and save them for later. Off the top of my head the strains I can really remember doing well (the ones that stick out) include - ‘White Pearl’ and ‘Holland’s Hope’, two types of ‘Californian Orange’, ‘Grapefruit’ and ‘Heavy Duty Fruity’.

These days as personal I really like smoking bubblehash on bong, so this is what I’m looking for mostly in my plants.

Plants that produce lots of resin to make hash from are good. The strains I most enjoy smoking in bud form are ‘Blue Berries’ and ‘Strawberry Cough’.

Capacity doesn’t allow me to run too many strains at one time, so I usually hold 4-5 genetics in hand. Some come from seed I’ve grown myself and others are traded or bought in as clones. Learning to root my own clones from the original mothers or clones I’ve been given is a valuable part of my method, since I always want to be growing the best quality weed plants in my garden. I just got hold of a ‘Diesel’ clone that produces really nice long flowers.

After smoking this strain in Amsterdam it went on the ‘to grow’ list. A friend of a friend sent the genetics to play with, so I gave it a try in one of my rooms. Another clone I’m trying just now is called ‘Blue Ice’, I’m told it came from a Welsh-Wizard (thanks).

I also like to keep carnivorous plants, not just weed. I pick them up at specialist fairs, from specific breeders (just like people do with weed seeds at cannabis fairs). These

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plants are as challenging to propagate as cannabis. They need rainwater only to survive, and must not be fed any nutrients.

I find these types of plants interesting to watch when I’m stoned and chilling. They catch all manner of insect and keep flies out of my greenhouse, which I sometimes use for veg with my weed.

` ÀÊ >À`i My indoor garden maximises on space, which isn’t always an easy trick because cannabis plants like to grow so quickly.

My bloom room is separated into two hubs. The main area uses 2.5 x 3 meters with access space. In this room too many plants often bask on x2 NFT trays under 2x600w (approx. 10plants per tray). The numbers tend to make most strains bloom into a dense canopy. Another tray usually houses another couple of plants in coco to one side. My smaller room is only 1.5 x 2.5m so things can get rather cramped.

This space only has front access to water and tend to plants, so sometimes I have to be a contortionist also. In this space 12plants consume 1000w (600w on a light rail, and 400w static) in coco. My main extraction focuses on this room to reduce overall heat. All the walls in both rooms are covered in mylar to aid reflection.

Because my area is internal, a fresh air source is provided by an active 125mm intake-fan. This helps keep my temperature cooler. Each room has its own oscillating fan to maintain an ambient airflow and good circulation. Finally a large 200mm carbon-filter services a 200mm extractor, so that old air is fed outdoors afterwards.

Without extraction my overall humidity levels would be too high, which could cause mold in buds.

For the last couple of cycles I have been using coco as my main medium in 10litre pots. Before this I used soils specifically designed for cannabis plants. I’d like to use bigger pots for bigger plants, but it’s all about managing my space and resources.

I water by hand, which means I have to irrigate my crop using a 20litre Jerry-can.

Watering by hand allows me to keep a close eye on nutrients, mixing a clean load each time. I use organic and chemical nutrients in combination.”

“If you’re using a substrate like coco then bacteria need to be able to live (just like they do in soil). For this reason chemical nutrients would be no good on their own; the benefits of using sterile foodstuffs are not maximised in cannabis growth.

Bacteria fix nutrients onto the plant in a more natural symbiotic relationship than chemical applications alone. I hand feed for this reason since the values used would jam an automated system quickly. To be fair, my feeding regime has been changing for a while now as I test new products. I just find that the right combination, at the right times seem to work. At present I feed House & Garden Coco A & B and H&G Top Booster as basic. A splash of Bio-Bizz Grow & Bloom when needed, and a drop of Super Thrive. I also use Voodoo Juice and Rhizotonic early on at intervals, to promote nice thick healthy root systems.

For enzymes, I like to use Canna-zyme, since it breaks down dead matter, and I find it helps my plants. My EC levels are always checked and my pH adjusted to 6.1 to allow for increase feeding into

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bloom. With this mixed feed program I can sometimes flush for up to 10days before harvest to cleanse the plants of any toxins.

Harvesting bubble-hash has become a bit of a ritual. All trim minus the fan-leaf and the stalks are placed onto a large clean plastic sheet in a dust-free environment when trimming. When dry, the trim waste is frozen and plenty of ice is prepared.

I used a x2 sac system with an extra catching sac to produce two grades of hash. Fine and Ultra Fine. Once collected the hash is squeezed dry through the sac in a tea towel to extract extra moisture. Then the kif is placed onto card and chopped to fine sand. It’s important to keep the bubblehash clean at all times. As it dries the appearance darkens and the natural smells develop. Left in this crumbly state, my personal stash I like to call “mumble crumble”. If possible I cure this hash for 7days before use. I often smoke this exclusively on pipe in season, the rest of the time I smoke weed spliffs from my bud jars.

The first sampling of the season is always an exciting event. My friends usually test smoke some buds and a cocktail spliff with the “mumble crumble” mixed in. Different types of strains produce a different type of mumble, in different people. Heavy Duty Fruity makes really nice bubblehash. If left to mature the buds are full of resin, which makes nice “mumble”. Californian Orange plants make very nice bubblehash also with a unique high and smell not found in other plants. The Californian Orange Bubble we made from whole live/fresh plants, harvested early, was like fudge in consistency with a sweet orange oil scent.

Until you’ve tried “bubbling” your own waste into hash you won’t believe how valuable the throwaway leaf and buds can become. Like the rainwater I feed my flytraps, I suppose its about using something you’d think is waste. This is one reason why I now like to leave every plant to fully mature these days, to make better bubblehash. It allows for a much fuller flavour in the end product, which is always better for smoking.

/iV µÕià I borrow some of my supper-cropping technique from Soma. This involves me squeezing and crushing the fleshier top nodes to thicken them up and removing some of the lower wispy branches while in veg cycle. This allows for nice air circulation beneath the canopy. I like to think that plants suck-up energy as they grow, so all focus is placed into the main branches with the most potential for growth. Using this technique I find that the buds have better form and the plants generally grow bigger in bloom.

Another trick that helped me to reduce my maximum temperature, (something I originally struggled with in summer) was to use a light-rail. This produces a more even amount of light in a confined area.

When combined with yo-yos to hold down stray branches and a proper ventilation system I’m now possible to get a much more even canopy in the same space as before, and it produces thicker buds.

I also like my gadgets like my EC truncheon and pH meter. More recently, I also decided to invest in a laser thermometer to gage specific temperature on individual flowers and leaf parts. Point the red-dot at something (shades/bulbs/soil/plant) press the button and it gives an exact reading. It allows me to then make alterations in my garden to try and get temps evened-out over the canopy of the plants.

ÕLL i >Ã During the last year I’ve started to turn my trash into stash. After watching several downloads and videos, I went out and invested in the equipment needed, and oh my god what stash I’ve made so far!

"NKTLM

i̽ÃÊ i>ÀÊ ÌÊ ÀÊ ViÊ

dismissing evidence which may obstruct questionable ‘reforms’.

"Y *OHN $EE

At this moment in time in the UK we’re looking at the prospect of two major “reforms” to two particular domains of enjoyment and recreation. We’re soon to have 24 hour licensing for alcohol consumption, and 24 hour gambling in the shape of super casinos (there is a cannabis-related point to all of this, so do please bear with me).

The reasons given for these are roughly as follows: it all boils down to consumer choice. People should be able to go for a nice quiet drink in a bar in the wee small hours if they so choose. This is bringing European-style drinking culture to the UK and it has to be a good thing as with restrictions lifted on when bars can and can’t open, then there won’t be any need for people to drink to excess, binge drink and so forth.

Similarly, the new casinos are also about consumer choice. People, so we’re told, want to basically just hand over their hard earned money to multinationals, again, if they so choose. This is bringing Las Vegas-style gambling culture to the UK and this has to be a good thing because…well, the argument from this point on becomes a bit hazy, but that’s getting away from the basic point of this.

So, the bottom line is that we’re told that both of the above are a response to market demand and to some vague notion of consumer choice.

If we ignore the obvious contradictions and stumbling blocks, the arguments for making these reforms would actually carry some water. Unfortunately, I’m at a loss as to how 24 hour drinking and gambling in the UK can be reconciled with issues such as huge upsurges in problematic drinking patterns, booze-related antisocial behaviour, massive increases in personal debt, more people declaring themselves bankrupt, etc.

It’s a peculiarity about governments and government agencies that they can get away with on the one hand producing and acting on evidence that supports action against pastimes they don’t like (such as cannabis use) while at the same time ignoring or

So one of the principal justifications for 24/7 gambling and drinking (other than that they’ll apparently bring with them lots of minimum-wage-slave jobs) is that ‘they open up consumer choice’.

Any concerns regarding the (potentially massive) negative outcomes are dismissed with the argument that this too comes down to personal choice: nobody is forced to drink alcohol and nobody is forced to waste a weeks’ salary looking for that lucky streak in the casino. It’s all about personal choice.

And to a degree, this is true, but if it’s true of drinking and gambling, it must also be true of cannabis use. Very few people are forced to do it; people do so because they choose to. And of course it’s widely accepted that, while cannabis is far from the benign substance it used to be regarded as, the end results of ‘chaotic dope use’ are still a world away from the end results of chaotic drinking. One doesn’t, for example, associate street brawls involving dozens of people and police with cannabis users.

Similarly, one doesn’t usually associate betting on roulette wheels or whatever to the point of bankruptcy (and past that point, in many cases) with cannabis users either.

Let’s be quite clear about this. In spite of all the excuses and justifications, these ‘reforms’ are being considered primarily as a way of filling the coffers of the Exchequer. And it can only be done with booze and gambling because they’re legal and are therefore controllable from a fiscal point of view. It’s all about the Government screwing people out of their money and lining the pockets of their big business cronies under the guise of choice.

If it’s good enough for two potentially highly harmful pastimes, it’s good enough for a less harmful one, so legalise cannabis. After all, as the Government says, it’s all about personal choice. dimethyltryptamine777@hotmail.com

"@MM@AHR "T KSTQD

3OFT 3ECRETS

V } V> Ê > >L ÃÊ À Ü }Ê Today we live in a consumer society.

This means that when consumption outstretches demand we end up wasting materials and resources. A main resource, which many indoor gardeners take-for granted, is electricity (another is water but we’ll save that for another issue).

Various charities and organisations in the UK like to remind people that energy efficiency is both beneficial to the environment, and a sustainable way of living within our means. In this article we shall consider the present ecological implications surrounding homegrowing in the UK. People like to think that homegrowing cannabis is an ecological pastime.

That they are somehow aiding the environment, and so on… This is an urban myth! Firstly, we must make a clear distinction between ‘outdoor’ and ‘indoor’ cultivation (they aren’t the same thing!) Outdoor, the ecological benefits of organic cannabis farming are visible for all to see. Cannabis plants, grow quickly, provide shelter for wildlife, consume large amounts of CO2 and throw out lots of Oxygen in return.

Outdoor cannabis finds semblance within Nature. Indoors however, when a growing area is bought into an artificial environment, the parameters of what ecologists term “ecology” becomes somewhat stretched.

The mathematicians might want to snatch a calculator and/or a pen and paper at this point. An average indoor garden (if there is such a thing) uses anyplace between 200 and 1500 watts of electricity for a 12hour period during its bloom cycle. Anyplace between this figure in cycles of 18 or 24hour veg.

As we start to add up the kilowatts of energy expended by indoor gardeners within the UK, we realise just how inefficient cannabis growing can become.

Since levels of inefficiency are usually measured against an overall target, this means there is always room for improvement.

Finding the right balance between levels of ‘consumption’ and levels of ‘production’ is the key to efficiency (and ultimately gardening success). Anyone

can keep throwing extra kilowatts of electricity into a grow room, in the hope that it might increase the overall yield, and in many cases it will, but at what cost? If/when the costs of a room exceed the crop-return, something might be wrong. Not only is it possible for a grower to waste energy, but they also loose out on some buds. Many indoor growers like to judge levels of efficiency against a ‘grams per watt’ figure that discounts all the other electrical inputs that make a crop possible (we’ll come onto this in a minute). A ‘grams per watt per month’ figure actually offers a far more realistic overview of the efficiency displayed by both light-source and grower. That is, how many weeks does it take to yield 1.2g per watt? We’d imagine that the differential between an 8week indica and a 15week sativa are immense when it comes to calculations like this. Perhaps we’ll leave the number counting to the accountants once again…

As amateur electricians, indoor growers must learn to harness every last drop of energy that is made available. And then distribute it into the places/spaces that need it most. Electricity has a fixed price per ‘kilowatt-hour’ in the UK between 8 - 14p (we keep hearing different figures different places). This cost may vary depending upon many things including; the time of day (economy 7) and the type of voltage an appliance supplies (220 - 250volts). This is where the ‘Sparkies’ get off on all that technical stuff (volts, watts, amps, hertz, and so on). Understanding the running wattage of a ballast-unit compared with the fireup wattage is complicated stuff! But the principles are easy enough to grasp. An electrical heater may use more energy than a light-source itself (at which point it’s wise to unplug the heater and add another lamp). On the flip side, an industrial-grade air-conditioning unit (the sort that are impossible to hire in July) often draws more energy cooling a room than the lights heating it! At this point it’s a case of shutting down at least 50% consumption (or production, depending upon which way you want to look at it).

Either way, once consumption outweighs production, any ethos regarding ecology and/or self-sufficiency is lost.

Now we can get onto all that other electrical stuff that helps an indoor room tick over. Starting at the wall, a timer uses about 5-10watts of electricity, an oscillating fan 100watts, a 125mm-extractor fan might use between 60-160watts (depending on setting).

That’s 190 watts (on a cool day) before plugging in any lamps! Hydroponic growers may use extra electricity on top of this. Let’s say 20watts per water-pump, 100-300watts per tank heater and/or 100-150watts for each compressor unit if running aeroponics.

That’s 500watts plus (on a warm day) for a single set-up. Lights range anywhere from between 125-1000watts per unit. At this point we shall take pause for thought. Ask yourself “Just exactly how many candle-watts of electricity is my grow-room using?”

While there are some really obvious ways of saving wattage (like replacing old bulbs that give out less lumens at the same cost as new ones), managing the resources available is far more ergonomic. For example, 2 x 600watt lamps use less electricity in relation to lumens than say 3 x 400watt lamps.

Then again, although both set-ups use the same 1200watts of candlepower, the 400watt units may run at a lower temperature, and cover more surface area (depending upon the shades) than the 600’s. Ultimately reducing the overall temperature in a room saves additional output-wattage on climate control. This is why it is always important to allocate the right resources into the right area. A computer fan will not compete with a 600watt bulb, just as a 250mm-extractor unit would be over kill when using fluorescent tubes.

Re-circulating ‘old air’ is also a waste of energy (and bad horticultural practise). Plants don’t want to be breathing the air they’ve already used.

The cost involved in reconditioning spent air is also very expensive. A carefully managed passive intake system, requiring little electrical input, and a good electrical output, is often all that is required to keep air flowing. Remember, outdoor temps are invariably always cooler than indoor

"Y LAZYSTRAIN

temps in the UK so creating fresh airflow can be as simple as opening a window. Making even the most minor of alterations and changes to a garden will often have a major effect (be it positive or negative) on growth, this is after-all one of the principle rules of phenotypic variation in plants.

The future is bright, not orange (change those old bulbs!). Eco-bulbs, digital ballasts, solar panels, hydrostatic fuel blocks, (and even perhaps domestic nuclear fuel cells one-day), shall revolutionise the way that we think about energy consumption while growing crops indoors at home. It has already been proven that where/when people produce their own electricity, they consume less. The onus is on the individual to conserve energy, so that his/her levels of consumption supply their own production, with always a little extra to spare. It’s not always possible to place a wind-turbine on top of a grow-room, and we all know that double-glazing costs more than it saves, but this doesn’t mean that people can’t start making some little changes here and there when they grow. It’s logical, ecological and most importantly beneficial for gardeners to think about the energy that goes into growing their plants.

It’s always the case that the people making small changes today make big differences tomorrow. For this reason we’d like to retract the idea that urban cannabis growers don’t practise ecological methods of cultivation; it’s just that the parameters of “ecology” sometimes get overlooked when push-comes-to-shove. The cannabis community actually stands at the forefront of innovation when it comes to intensive methods of cultivation. One of the reasons for this is that ANYONE that grows intensively is possible of prompting change, by testing out new ideas, products, and innovations. In this way the future parameters of gardening are constantly being revolutionised by cannabis-growers themselves; as they strive to reduce in-put and maximise out-put, making harvest-time a gardening success.

SDR M @ U Q D "

D F Q N &QNV VHSG )

3OFT 3ECRETS

46

-ii`Ã

!N INTRODUCTION TO #ANNABIS STRAINS

Nepalese sativas can grow oversized leaves on tall leggy plants that produce sparse, late-blooming buds, but other strains from this region develop into short, compact plants that bloom earlier.

Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) production and potency is often quite high but can also be second-rate.

4HE SEEDS CAME FROM #HANVRE #O n 4HIS LEAF FROM AN INDUSTRIAL HEMP PLANT CAME FROM THE &RENCH ENTITY #HANVRE #O )NDUSTRIAL hNO HIGHv CANNABIS WILL POLLINATE DRUG CANNABIS

Cannabis indica (= C. sativa var. indica) originated in Pakistan and India. Indica is prized by indoor growers and breeders for its squat, bushy growth; condensed root system; stout stems; broad leaves; and dense, THC-laden, fat heavy flowers.

Foliage is very dark green, and in some strains, leaves around buds turn reddish to purple. Short, whitish pistils turn reddish to purplish in hue. A few indicas from this part of the world have narrower leaves, long white pistils, and pale green foliage. Indica strains generally contain a higher ratio of CBD to THC, which causes an effect often described as a heavy, incapacitating “sit-on-your-head” stone. Potency of the “high” ranges from fair to stupefying. Some indicas have a distinctive odor similar to that of a skunk or cat urine, while others smell sweet and exotic. Heavily resin-laden plants tend to be the most fungus and pest-resistant.

Few indicas with heavy, dense, compact buds are resistant to gray (bud) mold.

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Hemp strains are all considered to be Cannabis sativa. Hemp, affectionately referred to as “rope,” is Cannabis sativa grown for fiber content. Hemp is often seeded and contains very, very low levels of THC. &ULL PAGE OF SEEDLINGS

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Technically and legally, all cannabis, whether rope or dope, is classified as Cannabis sativa. Regardless of origin, all cannabis is considered Cannabis sativa (C. sativa) under international law. However, according to Hemp Diseases and Pests, Dr. J. M. McPartland, R. C. Clarke, and D. P. Watson, CAB International, Cannabis sativa can be further classified as: Cannabis sativa (= C. sativa var. sativa), Cannabis indica (= C. sativa var. indica), Cannabis ruderalis (= C. sativa var. spondanea), Cannabis afghanica (= C. sativa var. afghanica).

Each has distinct growth patterns, look, smell, taste, etc.

that produces a soaring, energetic, “speedy” high. But potency can also be minimal, with low levels of THC. Most exported Columbian, Mexican, Thai, and Jamaican marijuana is poorly treated throughout life and abused when dried and packed. This abuse causes more rapid degradation of THC. Consequently, seeds from fair smoke are often more potent than the parent.

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South Africa has major seaports. Sailors brought Cannabis sativa from many different places and planted it in South Africa. Consequently, potency of South African weed can be very high or very low, and can grow short, tall, leggy, bushy, etc. The famous ‘Durban Poison’ yields potent, pale-green, early buds and is the best-known South African strain.

Cannabis sativa (= C. sativa var. sativa), originated predominately in Asia, the Americas, and Africa.

Each area of origin has specific characteristics, but all have the following general traits: tall, leggy stature with spacious internodal length, a large sprawling root system, large narrow-bladed leaves, and somewhat sparse flowers when grown indoors under lights. Sativas bloom several weeks to months later than indica strains. While good producers outdoors, often growing to 15 feet (4.5 meters) or more, indoors pure sativa strains often grow too tall too fast—some up to ten feet in three months—to be practical for grow room cultivation. An HID bulb is unable to efficiently illuminate tall plants, and the yield-per-watt-oflight or yield-per-square-foot-of-space is very low. Mexican, Columbian, Thai, and Jamaican strains can be very potent, with a high THC to CBD ratio

@,OWRYDER IS ONE OF THE FEW # RUDERALIS CROSSES THAT IS AUTO FLOWERING AND 4(# POTENT

Central African sativas, including the THC-potent ‘Congolese’, grow similarly to Columbian strains, with a tall leggy stature, often growing more than 15 feet (4.5 meters) tall with loosely packed buds.

Asian sativas, including Thai, Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, and Nepalese, have diverse growth characteristics and vary significantly in potency. While Thai and other sativas from the area are often super THC-potent, they are some of the most difficult to grow indoors and the slowest to mature. Thai strains produce very light, wispy buds after flowering for about four months on plants with large, sprawling branches. Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian sativas are more prone to grow into hermaphroditic adults.

#ANNABIS INDICA PLANT 3ILVER 0EARL

/NE OF THE FIRST 3EED "ANK CATALOGS FROM SHOWS A # RUDERALIS PLANT ALONGSIDE THE HIGHWAY IN (UNGARY -ANY BREEDERS MISTAKENLY HAILED THIS PLANT AS THE h(OLY 'RAILv OF CANNABIS

#ANNABIS INDICA LEAF HAS BROADER BLADES THAN # SATIVA LEAVES BUT NOT AS BROAD AS # AFGHANICA

Cannabis ruderalis (= C. sativa var. spondanea) was first brought to Amsterdam from Central Europe in the early1980s by the Seed Bank to enhance their breeding program. Very similar, if not the same “ruderalis” plants grow from Minnesota north through Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Canada.

3OFT 3ECRETS

47

C. ruderalis is a short, weedy, scrubby plant containing very, very little THC, but it starts the flowering cycle after a few weeks growth. Photoperiod does not induce flowering in C. ruderalis.

Sometimes confused with more potent indicas, pure C. ruderalis is true ditch weed. It yields a headache rather than a high! Today a few breeders have incorporated the early flowering C. ruderalis genes with other early blooming C. sativa, C. indica, and C. afghanica.

also causes hormone concentrations to dissipate and make seeds less viable.

Permeable seeds signal diseases and pests to move in. Such seeds are immature, white, fragile, and crush easily with slight pressure between finger and thumb. These are weak seeds and do not have enough strength to grow well.

Typically, a grower who acquires a bag of ten quality seeds from a reputable seed company germinates them all at once. Once germinated, the seeds are carefully planted and grown to adulthood. By and large, of the ten seeds, some will be male, some will be weak and grow poorly, and two or three seeds will grow into strong, super females. Of these “super” females, one will be more robust and potent than her siblings. This super female is selected be the mother of countless super clones.

> >L ÃÊ v} > V> Cannabis afghanica (= C. sativa var. afghanica) originated near present day Afghanistan. It is quite short, seldom reaching six feet, with distinctive, broad, dark-green leaflets and leaves. Dense branching and short internodes most often with long leaf stems (petioles) dominate the profile of C. afghanica.

The most common examples of pure C. afghanica include the many different Hash Plants and Afghani strains. C. afghanica is cultivated exclusively for drugs with much of the resin being made into hashish. It is known for the high cannabinoid content. Many growers and breeders do not distinguish C. afghanica from C. indica, lumping them both into the C. indica category.

#LOSE UP OF @0OWER 0LANT SEEDS

A simple picture of a seed reveals an embryo containing the genes and a supply of food wrapped in a protective outer coating. Mature seeds that are hard, beige to dark brown, and spotted or mottled have the highest germination rate. Soft, pale, or green seeds are usually immature and should be avoided.

Immature seeds germinate poorly and often produce sickly plants. Fresh, dry, mature seeds less than a year old sprout quickly and grow robust plants.

#LOSE UP OF @%CLIPSE SEEDS

4HE CUT AWAY DRAWING IN THE CENTER SHOWS HOW THE SEED WILL DEVELOP INTO DIFFERENT PLANT PARTS

@(ASH 0LANT OF WHICH THERE ARE MANY IS ONE OF THE CLASSIC # AFGHANICA STRAINS

@+ALI -IST SEEDS ARE SPOTTED AND MOTTLED

the following: C. sativa, C. indica, C. ruderalis, and C. afghanica. But there are also many seeds with the genes from just one of the above. These strains of cannabis are bred to grow best indoors.

Others grow best in greenhouses and still others outdoors in specific climates.

# AFGHANICA HAS VERY WIDE AND DISTINCTIVE LEAFLETS AND LEAVES

-ii`Ã Explosive growth of seed breeders and legal seed sales in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Switzerland, Spain, etc., has given way to more strains of cannabis than ever before. Most popular strains of cannabis are a combination of two or more of

A seed contains all the genetic characteristics of a plant. Seeds are the result of sexual propagation and contain genes from each parent, male and female. Some plants, known as hermaphrodites, bear both male and female flowers on the same plant. The genes within a seed dictate a plant’s size; disease and pest resistance; root, stem, leaf, and flower production; cannabinoid levels; and many other traits. The genetic makeup of a seed is the single most important factor

dictating how well a plant will grow under artificial light or natural sunlight and the levels of cannabinoids it will produce.

Strong, healthy parents and proper care yield strong seeds that germinate well.

Strong seeds produce healthy plants and heavy harvests. Seeds stored too long will germinate slowly and have a high rate of failure. Vigorous seeds initiate growth within seven days or sooner.

Seeds that take longer than a month to germinate could always be slow and produce less. However, some seeds take longer to germinate even under the best conditions.

The cask, or outer protective shell, on some seeds never properly seals, which allows moisture and air to penetrate. It

3EEDS IN THIS SEEDED FEMALE SWELL AND BREAK OPEN THE SEED BRACT

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PAGES FULL COLOR PHOTOS AND DRAWINGS

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3OFT 3ECRETS

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off with a 50:50 mix of part-used soil and fresh coco-fibre with added sea bird guano. A wire strawberry frame is then attached to the bucket to aid training. Outsider is really good for LST methods because the main stem and side-branches are really strong and easy to bend. After 30days the Outsider was starting to dominate the bucket with its big dark wide leaf patterns. The plant was ready to force-flower; otherwise it would have taken up more than 50% of the space allowed in bloom. By placing the plants into an even larger black bucket (with lid) ever night, it tricked them into thinking it was winter.

(IGH 1UALITY 3EEDS "Y -R -ISCHIEF 0HOTO ###0 Environment: Method: Medium:

Glasshouse Low Stress Training Soil & coco fibre (50:50 mix) Nutrient: Bat and seabird guano Grow time: 30days Flower time: 60days Plant Structure: Short and stocky Bud structure: round calyx Scent: skunky Effect: happy Yield: ---

Outsider is labelled as an ‘outdoor’ plant but the strain acts like it could also be grown indoors happily enough. The seeds were sown inside in soil and each cracked early with a nice thick root. The seedlings grew

really quickly, but stayed low. At 710 days the plants went outside into a glasshouse. After 3-4 days they were re-potted into a large bucket with some other plants. The bucket has a base of clay pebbles, topped

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thinned out. Only x4 went into new homes, x2 went outdoors directly into the vegetable patch. The x2 seedlings with the nicest profile were transplanted and kept inside on a window for about two weeks.

'ROWDOC 3EEDS "Y -R -ISCHIEF 0HOTO 'ROWDOC SEEDS Environment:

400watt

Method:

Standard and Bonsai

Medium:

soil

Nutrient:

water only

Grow time:

30 and 90 days

Flower time:

65 and 68 days

The two indoor plants were put in medium sized tubs and placed under a 400watt bulb for 11 hours per day.

The closet measures 4x3x6ft. The soil used was designed for cannabis.

Extra perlite was added to the soil to aid aeration. An oscillating fan was used. There was no extraction.

A rich sickly smell overpowered the whole house at about 28days bloom.

The buds were only fed water. At 35 days the flowers and shade-leaf were covered with resin - speechless.

Plant Structure: pretty indica Bud structure: sticky flowers Scent:

fruits

Effect:

heavy relaxing stone

Yield:

--

Ten Bubbledust were sown directly onto a damp tray of compost.

The tray was placed into a prop.

at 20c. In 48hours all the seed sprouted roots and the prop. lid was removed. Next the seedlings were

-i à Ê-Ì>ÀÊ "Y -R #LUMSY 0HOTO BY 2ICK 5+ Environment: 1000watts +

Planted with a selection of skunk clones the Sensi Star grew slowly at first. Soon they shot up above the other clones, growing into neat compact bushes. The plant structure is not too tall and not too bushy and each plant was uniform in height and width. The coned shaped tops made these Sensi Star plants look like small Christmas trees from a distance. We noticed a buildup of THC at five-six weeks into flowering. By this time we stop feeding.

Seed to standard

Medium:

Bio-Biz All-Mix

Nutrient:

Canna

Grow time:

25days

Flower time:

65-70days

Plant Structure: Christmas tree shape Bud structure: Dense colas Scent:

Lemon-skunk

Effect:

Stoned

Yield:

50grams +

We wanted to give Sensi Star a grow in our garden. From five seedlings four healthy plants were grown.

The others struggled in the extreme

heat of our room. The plants were potted-on each time they grew into bigger pots. One plant grew taller in the vegetative cycle, but all plants looked very uniform with the same

inwards. At 21days bloom the calyx began to form rounded buds with thick white hairs. Some branches were seeded with pollen from a male plant in the bucket at this point.

The main stem was twisted to oneside and left de-seeded. By 40 days flowering the Outsider still had a nice healthy colour in the leaf. The buds had some nice resin coating them.

The main thing about Outsider is the strains overall health. The genetics stand out, which is why it was put to seed. The plant is a lot like Holland’s Hope, smaller but still fit and strong.

The thick leafs on Outsider and good girth makes it stand out from the crowd. Next time some Outsider will be staying indoors with more light to make some very oily/sticky buds, for real. The smoke from the main bud was happy with a taste of skunk. Not bad for an early grow outside in spring.

‘grape’ smell was then noticeable.

The profile of these BD was dense, with broad fan-leaf on fat main branches. The outdoor BD where transplanted about 30days later. One of the plants was male. The other was placed under LST to make a bonsai plant with twelve branches.

In bloom Bubble Dust makes some really pretty indica buds to look at.

The buds take a while to naturally dry. To smoke BD is fruity with a heavy relaxing stone. You can taste the Bubblegum and the petrol taste of Angel Dust in the undertone.

Even the finer trim-leaf (not fingers), dried first, tasted fruity and gave an immediate stone.

The buds looked ready to smoke at 50-60days, the calyx swelled out and twist-up as they matured. The fruity

leaf spread. At about 25days the Sensi Stars were placed into the flowering room. After sexing, three plants were females and were potted into final pots of Bio-Biz soil. One plant was male. It was composted.

"LACK ,ABEL Method:

In bloom, under glasshouse conditions, all the plants were fed a bit of bat guano tea. The pre-flowers on the Outsider showed quicker than the other x2 female strains in the bucket. The main stem was moulded onto the frame, like an old tree trunk. The branches were trained

49

During flowering they seemed to handle high summer temps well.

The leaves were all close together.

We could tell that the plants needed

more airflow not more food, because some leaves where scorched. The rough edges started to yellow early and stayed like this until harvesting.

Two of the Sensi Stars turned out as we’d expected. Tight buds on bushy plants with pyramid tops. One plant got groovy and made those funky colas that look like lots of balls stuck together. The hairs stayed white on this plant and were ready for harvesting quicker than the other two.

The buds shrunk some when hung.

To smoke Sensi Star tastes lemony when harvesting young, and much headier when left to ripen off. Sensi Star definitely improves with age.

The plants went to just under ten weeks before harvesting. The yield we thought was OK (above average) for this sort of plant in our garden.

50

3OFT 3ECRETS

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7ITH THE 3OFT 3ECRETS -ARIHUANA #OOKING 'UIDE YOU WILL NEVER AGAIN BE CAUGHT EMPTY HANDED WHEN FRIENDS COME A CALLING (ERE YOU CAN READ THE TASTIEST RECIPES IN WHICH THE UTILITARIAN AND THE CONGENIAL ARE COMBINED IN ONE

Repeat this process until the booze is so full of marihuana herbs, that a small swig is already enough for a one way ticket to fairytale land. Then just pour this enriched drink in to a tightly sealable bottle. You can also, should you wish, also add a few drops of hash oil to give the potion that extra aromatic effect.

Shake the bottle well before you use any of the contents. The active ingredients will tend to settle at the bottom. Should clumps start to settle out after the liquid has been stored for a long time, simply warm up the cannabis brandy again au bain marie. Then add a bit of extra brandy to it.

Ó°Ê,iV «ià Because large meals work against the effects of THC, here we will be offering mostly small recipes, ones that combine pleasure for the taste buds and spiritenriching effects with each other.

Instant hash bhang A popular Indian drink.

The first thing you have to know when cooking with marihuana is that THC does not dissolve in water, but it does dissolve in oils, fats, and alcohol. This piece of wisdom has been known for thousands of years, since the first hasheating cultures of for example, India.

Maybe you have heard the stories of people who have tried to make a tea out of a marihuana bud. Some wait for hours and hours, without any high resulting from its consumption. In that case the THC has not (or barely) dissolved in the tea water. In other cases the person does get stoned from the marihuana tea. But that is only because the buds obviously had so many THC molecules in them that they were simply driven in to the water, and so it was these suspended molecules that the user had imbibed. But this last example has nothing to do with making any kind of tea.

Warning! Make sure that the ganja that you use remains in an air-tight package, right up to the moment that you are about to use it. Letting your buds lie around too long in a kitchen unit will result in a loss of the active force.

One other question that perhaps you are about to ask yourself is whether cannabis sativa still works when it has been baked? Well now, in principle the answer that the active force of ganja declines as soon as it is burnt. We will be taking account of this in the recipes.

Mostly we are talking about toasting the buds, whereby the effect remains intact.

£°Ê-Ì>ÀÌ }Ê }Ài` i ÌÃ Below is a short list of the products that can be made at home, that can be used as substitutes for the traditional starting ingredients.

Cannabis butter One other lesson is that it makes verify little sense to make huge amounts of food if getting stoned is the primary goal. The more you eat, the more difficult it is for the THC to get into the blood stream, because it has to find its way out of the stomach through all the other food that has been consumed. That is not something that is insurmountable; the stonedness will come eventually.

But a drawback is that the body evacuates a large part of the THC along with a large plate of pasta. That is a shame, because then you have paid for cannabis that in actual fact you have not actual used.

One other reason why we should not eat too much in combination with marihuana is that, particularly for people with a sensitive stomach, such a combination can quickly develop symptoms of queasiness.

Cannabis butter, also known as Ghee, is a product that is used in many marihuana-tinted meals. You can see it as a basic starting ingredient. That is why it is described here apart from the regular recipes.

Where to get it? – In the Netherlands, Cannabis butter or Ghee can be bought at some coffee shops. This is certainly not the case in the UK and besides, it is much more fun to make your own anyway!

Preparation instructions: Heat 2 pounds of real dairy butter in a pan on a low flame. Just until the little white flakes start to float to the top. This white top layer is skimmed off with a spoon. You continue this process until there is only pure oil left behind. This you then pour into a jar that can be sealed, and then placed in your fridge.

The next step is put the Ghee in a pan again the next day, on a low temperature, and stir into it well-sieved marihuana buds. Add a little vodka and salt to it.

Keep stirring until the butter takes on the green colour of the cannabis. Then pour this warm stuff through a sieve and pour it into a jar so that the pure cannabis butter is separated from the twigs, leaves and the bud remains. Put the green butter in the fridge.

You can also do this whole process with a sieved, or finely-crumbled hash. That is also much easier, because you don’t end up with all those twigs, and the hash dissolves much more easily in the butter.

Cannabis brandy Because cannabis dissolves so well in alcohol it is an excellent idea to begin our master class with the making of an alcoholic pick-me-up, spiced up with the necessary THC. This is something you can drink pure. But we mostly use the brandy to add some pep to other dishes.

Preparation instructions – It is actually pretty easy to make canna-brandy. Take a bowl or Tupperware tub that can be sealed and toss in all the marihuana leftovers you have at home. Add to this enough decent rum, vodka, or brandy to cover it. Leave the cannabis leftovers for a few weeks in the alcoholic drink.

After this you put the jar or tub au bain marie in a large metal pan stood on the gas with boiling-to-almost-boiling water in the bottom. Warm the tub for around 45 minutes.

Take a sieve in which you have placed the old trimmings of cannabis. Pour the warmed alcoholic brandy through this sieve and in to another tub or bowl.

Preparation instructions: Put a couple of knobs of hash butter in a pan along with two tea cups of boiling water. Add to this 1 gram of crumbled hash and let the mixture boil for a minute. Fill two tall mugs 1/3 full with milk. Pour the same quantity of the hash-butter water through a sieve in to the mug, and leave any residue behind in the sieve. Add to each mug 1 dessertspoon of honey, 1 teaspoon of nutmeg and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon.

Stir well, then sit back and enjoy!!

Majoon marihuana jam Majoon is a type of jam that is widely eaten in India. People there eat it on crackers or on toast.

Preparation instructions – Take a baking pan and scatter a quarter of a gram of nicely sorted marihuana buds in to it, then roast them until they are good and brown. Now get a bowl and toss the buds in. Add a number of dates, a half cup of sultanas, a half cup of shelled walnuts, and a teaspoon each of ground nutmeg and aniseed. Then to finish off, add a dessertspoon of honey. Stir the whole thing until you have a mush.

Add half a drinking glass of water, then boil this mixture in a small pan until the ingredients have become soft and mixed in with each other. While the product is still hot, add a further two dessert spoons of melted butter to it and beat this in to the jam. Then put the jam into a glass jar with a firm lid on it, and save this in the fridge. Your Sunday morning toast will never be the same again!

Hamentashen This is a different jam. But this is made from hash. You can consume it in the same way as the majoon jam, with crackers or toast. Majoon and Hamentashen are in fact the same products as the famous ‘green paste’ that was eaten by the members of the Club des Hashischins, and enjoyed at the end of the 19th Century by the likes of writers Rimbaud and Baudelaire.

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Preparation instructions: Mix in a bowl with a wooden masher two cups of dried plums (prunes), a half cup of almonds, 1 dessert spoon of lemon juice, half top 1 teaspoon of powdered cinnamon and a quarter gram of hash. That is the whole procedure. Accordingly, put the jam in a pot and keep it cool.

In this last variation the effects of the THC are greater than in the first case.

Cannabis milk shake Combine a half gram of finely chopped marihuana buds with a half drinking glass of milk and half a drinking glass of single cream.

White Marrakesh cookies Mix with a spatula 1 cup of warm cannabis butter and a half cup of honey.

Add an egg to it, plus two dessert spoons of vanilla powder. Add a very small handful of orange zest.

Next you add three cups of flour mixed with 1 teaspoon of baking powder. Stir these ingredients until you have a good dough in your hands.

Let the dough cool in the fridge for an hour so that it becomes stiff. Take out the dough and roll it out with a rolling pin or bottle, so that it is approximately 1 centimetre thick. Then cut the cookie shapes out of the dough, but do not let any one piece be more than 5 centimetres wide or long. You can use a drinking glass for this, pressing its rim into the dough, if you have not got a cookie cutter in your kitchen.

Place the cookies on a baking tray or on a grill shelf with aluminium foil and press a single almond in to the centre of each cookie. Bake this tray in a pre-heated oven at 190 degrees Celsius for 6 to 8 minutes. Let them cool, and get your dunking hand ready!

Mexican dip sauce Mix with a masher 3 dessert spoons of wine vinegar, 2 teaspoons chilli powder and half a cup full of pulverised marihuana buds thoroughly. Let this half-product stand for an hour. Then add three ripe avocados and two diced onions.

Mix all these ingredients together until the avocado is mixed with all the other materials. Serve this as a dip sauce with taco chips.

You can also vary this recipe by omitting the wine vinegar, and lightly roasting the marihuana in a baking tray together with a half cup of olive oil. After that you add this to the avocado, the onions and the chilli powder. Adding a splash of lemon juice will add a bit of zing to the mixture.

Add to this a half teaspoon of white castor sugar. Mix the whole lot in a blender for two minutes.

Next pour the contents of the blender in to a pan and warm the drink on a low flame for ten minutes. Make sure there is no skin on the surface, and skim this off if it does form.

Then add a few spoons of honey to the mix in the pan. Pour the drink back in to the blender, and add half a teaspoon of vanilla powder to it. Turn off the blender, and pour the mixture into the fridge and leave until ice cold.

When you come to drinking the milkshake, turn the blender back on and give the mix a good frothy whiz. Serve with a straw!

How do I make an ice cream out of the mixture?

Well now, add a raw egg to the milkshake, and beat the mixture well. Put this in a suitable mould, such as a Tupperware tub, or an old ice cream tub. Put the lid on firmly and put it in the freezer compartment. Do not let the tub sit for too long in the freezer, because then the ice will crystallize too much! But do serve the ice cream ice cold!

Crème de gras To make a really delicious marihuana liqueur, you need a bit of patience. A real distillation process takes place that will be described here.

Preparation instructions – Put the contents of a 2-gram pack of marihuana in a quarter litre bottle. You can use an old, well-cleaned gin bottle or something along those lines. Add to this heated vodka, and a similar quantity of water, so that the bottle is filled up. Keep this bottle at room temperature for five days. Take a look every so often to check that the buds are not floating to the top too much.

After this period you sieve the buds and twigs out. The residue you use to add to a new bottle of heated vodka.

Sieve this one too after five days and add the sieved liquid to the mixture from the first bottle. Let the residue steep for another five days in a quarter of a litre of pure water.

On the fifth day, heat the bottle au bain marie in a pan with water for 45 minutes. Do not screw the top on the bottle too hard, as if you do you can run the risk of an explosion.

After this you sieve the warmed marihuana water off, and add this to the already sieved alcoholic drink.

Filter this half and half product through a coffee filter. Repeat this step several times so that you end up with a clear liquid. Should there be any gunk left behind in the filtered liqueur, leave the bottle to stand for a few days, so that the sediment sinks to the bottom of the bottle.

The clean filtered drink is poured in to a bottle on to which the top is carefully screwed and placed back in the hot water pan and warmed for a further 15 minutes. Add with a thin spoon several dessert spoons of honey to the bottle.

Tighten the bottle top well, and shake well so that the honey dissolves in the liqueur.

The eventual product is transferred into an elongated liqueur bottle. The longer and thinner the bottle, the better it is for letting the sediment settle.

Finally, you leave the bottle to stand for a few months.

After this period of time, pour the contents of the bottle once more through a coffee filter so that any newly—formed sediment is also removed. Label the bottle appropriately, such as your own crème de gras.

On consuming it, you will find after two glasses that you’re hit by a high experience the likes of which you have never had before!

Turkish cuppa As a rule of thumb, coffee reduces the intoxicating effect of THC, and strengthens its energy-giving qualities.

Preparation instructions: Make a good pot of coffee in the classic filter method.

Use a Turkish coffee boiler into which you add for each cup of coffee a teaspoon of Arabian mokka powder. If you are not acquainted with such a coffee boiler or with mokka, go take a look in any Turkish spice shop, such as you will find in most large towns. Purchasing one should not set you back too much.

Add to this a dash of cardamom seeds, which you can also get hold of in Moroccan or Turkish grocers shops. Then add to this a half gram of hash per cup.

Next pour the freshly made coffee over the mokka powder and the cardamom seeds in the boiler. Heat the Turkish boiler over a soft flame on the stove top, until the moment that it threatens to boil.

At that moment remove it immediately from the stove.

Serve the Turkish cuppa in an espresso cup, complete with tiny spoon. You can add a small spoonful of honey too.

With or without hash, this is the way to make proper Turkish coffee.

Then just sip away at the coffee, and use your small spoon to bring the mokka, the cardamom and the honing to the surface.

Your enjoyment can begin! *This article has drawn heavily from the standard work Cooking with Cannabis

by Adam Gottlieb.

7ARNING )T IS WELL KNOWN TO THE AVERAGE 3OFT 3ECRETS READER THAT BY EATING SPACE CAKE YOU ARE RENDERED STONED FOR LONGER AND MORE DEEPLY THAN IF YOU JUST SMOKE A JOINT 4HE RECIPES MENTIONED HERE ARE ALL FOR THE EXPERIENCED CANNABIST !RE YOU NOT TOO SURE WHAT YOU RE DEALING WITH HERE 4HEN PROCEED CAREFULLY AND USE A LITTLE BIT LESS THAN THE AMOUNTS OF CANNABIS STATED HERE

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LTRHB 4HE "EAUTY 2OOM 4HE "EAUTY 2OOM 0EACEFROG 2ECORDS

This luscious piece of ambience, largely the creation of producer Kirk Degiorgio and vocalist Jinadu, exudes an intoxicating magical quality that stems from its inherent humanness- the lyrics, vocal harmonies and instrumentation.

Opening and closing with soaring acoustic soul ballads “The Beauty Room” is an unashamedly rich listening experience, where lavish strings slide beneath enchanting harmonies in a warm analogue soup. Recalling past influences such as Steely Dan, Crosby Stills and Nash, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and the Beach Boys with its Fender Rhodes keyboards, vocals and laid back funky feel; new technology is also embraced, reaching to a transcendental state beyond time and space. This is inspired, heart-warming music to really chill out to. #OMPILATION 7ORLD #IRCUIT 0RESENTS 7ORLD #IRCUIT

World circuit records celebrate twenty years of recordings with the release of this 28 track, 2CD collection. Featuring an unparalleled line-up of artists, this compilation brings together previously unreleased studio recordings and live versions to appeal to the world circuit aficionado and highlight favourites for those seeking an introduction to the label. Wending its way from the Buena Vista Social Club to Ali Farka Toure through Ibrahim Ferrer and Ruben Gonzalez, ‘World Circuit Presents.’ is packed with classic performances from the labels top artists: Orchestra Baobab, Toumani Diabate and Cheikh Lo to mention but a few. Not content with releasing a mere ‘greatest hits’, the album also sheds light on lesser-known aspects of World Circuit’s output. Uncovered deep from the vaults are half-forgotten masterpieces, previously unheard live performances and other un-released material such as the amazing brain entraining Moroccan Gnaoua trance music from Mustapha Baqbou. A personal favourite is the extraordinarily delightful rendition of Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’ with its quirky improvised style. One could not dream of a musical arras more rich in cultural texture and splendid in colour. !TOMIC (OOLIGAN 4HE 2EMIXES "OTCHIT 3CARPER

The follow on to last year’s hugely successful album ‘You Are Here’, ‘The Remixes’ furthers the

"/Ê7 8 "Y +AZ 0EET

Ê-/" Ê- / " deftly crafted sonic adventures of Atomic Hooligan breaks masters duo Matt Welch and Terry Ryan with this rockin’ set of mash-up tunes.

4HE 2ESIDENTS 4WEEDLES -UTE

Here comes more insanity of the sonic variety from The Residents with their new album release, “Tweedles”, the result of some strange and rather unusual circumstances. In the autumn of 2005 The Residents received an offer: a young gentleman in Romania had built himself a state of the art recording studio and had the wild dream of asking his favourite band, The Residents to try it out. As it happened, the bands’ own studio was undergoing a process known as seismic upgrade (strengthening the building to withstand a major earthquake) and could not use the facility for a year. Fate had stepped in and The Residents saw no reason not to have a look at the studio. The group boarded a jet for Bucharest in early 2006 with the idea of recording a couple of tracks while having a nice vacation in a country they had never visited. Since no ideas had been formed in advance as to what would be recorded, they felt it was appropriate to record everything during the trip, including the jet’s take off. Once on the plane and bored, ideas started coming and soon The Residents were roughing out an idea for the whole album.

The group’s ultimate destination was not Bucharest, but a town 400 kilometres away, Hunedoara in the area of Romania known as Transylvania, historically the home of Count Vlad III, fictionalized by Bram Stoker as the vampire Dracula. By the time they landed in Bucharest they had outlined an album about a ‘vampire’ of sorts. Not a Bela Lugosi vampire, but one that feasted on broken hearts; a man who devoured the romantic emotions of others as a source of power. A man who took the stance that anyone who would stoop so low as to love him was not worth loving in return. The band fell in love with Hunedoara and as they produced their story of sexual compulsion, their impromptu recordings of street musicians, church bells and a small travelling circus with its strong Felliniesque presence, soon made it into their electronic pieces.

Focusing less on harmonics and melody than their previous release, Animal Lover, these latest compositions are a patchwork of new and often exotic textures. For the group, this patchwork was the reflection of an often chaotic, but uniquely immersive experience.

#OMPILATION 4HE BIGGEST REGGAE ONE DROP ANTHEMS 'REENSLEEVES

This is a carefully chosen collection of some of the most sought after conscious songs on brand new one-drop or lick over rhythms that have taken over the air waves and the dances for the best part of this year. Included on this value for money double cd. package is a fistful of tunes from long time favourites Bounty Killer and Sizzla such as the powerful ‘Chant Dem Down’ as well as newest blood on the scene, Fantan Mojah, who has had two number one’s this year already, dropping in here with ‘Nuh Build Great Man’, ‘No Mercy’ and ‘Jah Time’. Other hits from the year include ‘Phantom War’- Lutan Fyah, ‘Beautiful Lady’Gyptian and ‘Nuh Badda Mi’ - Perfect.

The whole album pumps, bumps and grinds to the vibration of peace love and righteousness. An inherent part of this is the Rasta man’s ritual of smoking the herb, mention of which is never far from any roots reggae album.

Continuing the tradition here are Marlon Asher with ‘Ganja Farmer’, Gyptian - ‘Sensi’, Albrosie - ‘Herbalist’ and Jah Mason with ‘Couple Chalice A Day’.

Skin up, rise up and give praise with this excellent and comprehensive album.

(EIDI -ONZA #LUB )BIZA 6OL 'ET 0HYSICAL -USIC

Arising from the Monza club night in Ibiza, set up

by Frankfurt’s Patrik Dechent of Sunset People with the idea of doing something fresh and to bring new music to the island, this upbeat mix flows with open-mindedness and innovation.

Avoiding repetition and constantly on the move, ‘Monza’ streams through a range of styles and emotions. From Dennis Ferrer and Kerri Chandler’s sensuous house to the ominous bass of Martin Landsky’s ‘1000 Miles’, the reduced funk of John Tejada’s ‘Forced Fiction’, Heidi and Riton’s jacking ‘Vejer’ and Erol Alkan’s up-tempo, summery remix of Hot Chip’s ‘Boy From School’, Heidi never stays in one place for too long.

Her wish is that in a disposable world, for the mix to be timeless and sound just as good in the future.

,ITTLE "ARRIE 0IN 4HAT "ADGE % 0 'ENUINE

This three-track primer serves as a tasteful appetizer for the forthcoming LP. -’Stand Your Ground’, and an insightful view of the developing sound of this loose collective.

The recordings in their clarity make a break from the past; vocals more exact and the instrumentation starkly realised. The band have obviously riffled the fifties guitar sound of Dorsey and Link Wray as the bedrock for their new sound. A monster riff echoing the sound clash between Run DMC anchors the opening track. And Aerosmith, a lo-fi funkadelic rubs shoulders with a succinct Beck style arrangement. Track two’s take on classic rockabilly avoids the cliché of nostalgia by conjuring the ghosts of a fuzzed up Cochrane and Bolan, fed through contemporary production. A gem.

The last tracks pared down arrangement hints at the soul based sound of the first LP., a terse example to the over elaboration of the Raconteurs. Strength through brevity, an ominous harbinger of things to come, good omens on the rise.

"ONOBO $AYS 4O #OME .INJATUNE

Bonobo’s latest release finds himself drawing together the underdeveloped into a more sharpened production and coherent whole; this time there’s hardly a chimp in the armour. His debut LP. ‘Animal Magic’, through poor distribution uniquely resulted in him being bigger in the Belgian Congo rather than his hometown of Brighton. Hopefully this new release may give him the crossover success his talent deserves. This refined mixture of melancholic instrumentals, ambient sound scapes and the revelatory integration of world voices combined with rave live reviews from The Big Chill and The Glade will finally establish his place in the mainstream. Expect a PJ Tips advert theme tune soon; it’s in the leaves.

A very important nutritional element is nitrogen, signified by the letter N. Nitrogen is vital for the formation of chlorophyll and for a fast-grower like the marihuana plant it is doubly important. An excess of nitrogen leads to a weakening of the marihuana plant, and the consequence is a lowered resistance to diseases and moulds.

58

K@MC K N '

M H

D C @ ,

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! ROOM FULL OF (AWAIIAN (AZE

and make use of the buffering qualities that good soil has naturally. You should just make sure that you give precisely enough that the plant should after a week show signs of a deficiency. And then in the days following this point you give exactly what the plant needs for the next five days.

In short I would say that that I let the fertilizing with nitrogen (N) peak in the beginning, from the 2nd up to and including the 4th week, and then after this to slowly let it be phased out until two weeks before the harvest.

I allow the phosphorous (P) to peak in the 2nd week, when the super growth begins, then in the same way to reduce to a minimum, and then gradually begin to raise it again from week four to reach its maximum in week eight or nine, a level I can maintain until the 13th week before stopping giving it a week and a half before the harvest.

*iÌiÀÊ` iÃÊ ÌÊÜ Ì ÊLÕLL iÃÊÊPart 7

4EXT AND 0HOTOS 3MILEY 'RASS

)N THIS SERIES FOR THE ORGANIC GROWER EACH ISSUE WE PUT A DIFFERENT WEED GROWER FROM THE .ETHERLANDS UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT )N THIS EPISODE WE ARE PRIVILEGED WITH A GLIMPSE INTO THE KITCHEN OF 0ETER A YEAR OLD FURNITURE MAKER FROM THE CENTRE OF 5TRECHT AND A GREAT PLANT LOVER (E ONLY HARVESTS ONCE A YEAR SOMETIMES TWICE "UT THEN WE ARE TALKING ABOUT PERFECTION "ECAUSE 0ETER HAS BUT A SINGLE GOAL EVERY YEAR TO NOT JUST RAISE (AZE WITH A SWEET HIGH IN AS ORGANIC AS POSSIBLE BUT TO ALSO MAKE THE BEST HOMEMADE "UBBLE (ASH IN THE .ETHERLANDS 3O HOW DOES 0ETER GO ABOUT THIS “My basic starting point is a good organic manure that I supplement with chemically pure fertilizers. For the de natural irregularities that go with the territory when you’re growing organically, I top up my plants according to their individual needs with, pure N, P and Ks. I do not really use all that many Boosters because I actually tend to have too many trace elements anyway.

The addition of metals is something I keep more firmly under control, because having too high a concentration of trace elements is not a good thing, it’s overkill; twice during each grow – maximum - is enough for the whole harvest. If any deficiencies do develop, depending on the varieties you are growing, then these are easy to make up during the bloom. If you discover small white stripes between the veins of the leaves that means that they have been given a few too many trace elements and that you have to stop giving supplements to your plants. At the same time you learn that next time you grow this variety to go a bit easier with your hand.

> LÀ Ê,i` > ÀÊ I first started growing on my 18th birthday. First on my balcony; nice in the outdoors, and excitement all Summer wondering how the last few weeks of blooming would turn out: nice weather and an abundant harvest, or a wet Autumn and mould among your buds?

Back in the beginning of the 1980s (grow shop pioneer) Wernard Bruining introduced me for the first time to smoking the “new” Nederweed, Skunk, it

was called, I believe. I was immediately smitten. And of course I got hold of a few clones as soon as I could, at first for my balcony. From those plants from the early days I have been growing their descendants for years. In the beginning I had selected two different genetic lines from the newcomers, one that was totally white and another that was more or less purple. A real dark red, something it most probably got from an ancestor of the Skunk, the so-called Fallbrook Redhair, names after the place between San Diego on the Mexican border and Los Angeles, so in California, and developed by the local farmers between the avocado trees. And take note – during the 1970s, because since Nancy Reagan kicked off the War on Drugs in the US you don’t find very much dope in Fallbrook any more, or if you do it’s come from the US Marines who have put some seeds to use in the wilderness surrounding their nearby Camp Pendleton.

Seven years ago in the space of a day I lost my house and my wife (and so my balcony too), and I was forced to set up camp in a cramped attic. I had no room for more than a bed and a cupboard, and this is where I lived for a while. The cupboard had a footprint of about 60 by 60 centimetres – exactly big enough to be able to carry on growing my green friends, with a bit of help from some good lighting. And to make new crosses, of course.

I began in the cupboard with 60 seeds and 20 clones that I allowed at the peak of their bloom to be fertilised by

a wonderful Mexican male, a Sativa in fact. Out of this I had one stroke of good fortune. A Haze, and a really strange one at that, that I went on to cross more times, made selections and bred from.

The result was that I picked up First and Second prizes for organic weed and that my home made hash has now been voted a couple of years in a row by the Americans (at High Times) as the best Bubble Hash in the world. That plant is the Hawaiian Haze, the original, and developed by me, in a cupboard next to my bed. It really is a strange world.

> } }Ê Ì ÊÃ iÌ }ÊÞ ÕÊÜ> ÌÊ By determining yourself what levels of NPKs to add to your organic manure you can slowly get your plants to change in to something that you want. Agriculturalists and growers in greenhouses often give their products some extra nitrogen at the beginning of their crop; so you can assume, since growing under lamps creates conditions that are usually more extreme than in our domestic outdoor spring, that in the beginning you also need to give a lot of extra nitrogen to your plants too.

The majority of A and B nutrients when used on soil are not sufficiently adequate, because they provide too fierce a transition for the as yet still young plants that are in a growth spurt. That sort of nutrient is really only suitable for use if your soil is really very poor, but then you are missing a good base and it is actually pretty pointless to grow in such soil. With soil you have to play around

I gradually apply potassium a bit more, actually throughout the whole cycle in relatively steady levels with a light peak in the middle of the bloom. During the ten to fifteen days before the harvest I only give my plants water, since the plant is barely taking up any nutrients, if any at all and so she has enough just with what still sits in the soil. In addition to that it is a nicer smoke for me and the consumer, because an excess of salts in the last week before the harvest gives the plant a sharp taste when it is smoked. I do not want to taste what kind of manure was being given the plant while I am smoking, thank you very much. And I’m assuming neither do you.

ÌÊ`i«i `ÃÊ ÊÜ >ÌÊÌ iÊÊ } À ÃÊ ii`oÊ I mix All-Mix with cloning soil in a 1to-1 ratio when I plant the young clones in small pots. I begin with giving them a bit of extra nitrogen and phosphorous so that I arrive at an Ec-value (salt value) of 0.9, working from the assumption that the mains water has an Ec-value of 0.6 as a base. I bump that up a notch at the end of the week to an Ec of 1.3. In the 2nd week I re-pot the young plants in the soil, that has a base with an Ec-value of 1.6. I enrich the first watering with a few crumbs of magnesium and a little nitrogen, due to the huge demand at that moment, to a maximum of 0.9 Ec. The second feeding I give a little more, up to an Ec of 1.0, and for the third a little more again, with an Ec of 1.1 or 1.2, depending on what the girls need. At that moment you can still jump in directly with fast results. My green girlfriends understand me, and I understand them...

The soil that I have used for a second time has become pretty much depleted of nitrogen and trace elements during the first harvest I used it for and so I add extra to the old soil in order to be able to take a second crop off it. What I have a shortage of I make up with All-Mix. The Ec of this ready to use soil can vary a bit and tends to be between 1.8 and 2.4. if you start out with a heavy hand on your base and the Ec of your new All-Mix is a bit on the high side, then of course I don’t give any extra nitrogen and pay

3OFT 3ECRETS

attention to how the plants develop during the first five days they spend with their roots in the new medium. That is why I always mix it in to my old soil.

And with a totally new set up I therefore always mix it with cloning soil to get my Ec around 1.6.

-i iVÌÊiÛiÀÞÊÌÜ ÊÞi>ÀÃÊ At the moment I have 24 different mother pants. That alone is a hell of a lot of work.

I number every clone, so that I always know what is going on. Even four years later I can still tell what the original mother was for any plant I happen to have in my hands at that moment. Then I can also tell, even over the longer term, which plant makes more THC and / or the loveliest buds, which is more compact and less vulnerable to mould infection, and which type changes over time, for the better as well as for the worse. That is why I tend to make a selection every two years, to be constantly maintaining the quality or, where necessary, to improve. I only got in to growing to provide myself with something good to smoke, not to go making the best hash in the world, because actually that does not interest me one little bit. It’s all about my own health and my own head and what I feel most comfortable with, right? In short, what I do I do for me only. You gotta do what you gotta do. That is why I only harvest once or twice a year. I just do not fancy doing it more than that; 15 weeks per cycle is quite enough, and I have my own work to do making furniture, something that remains to base of my existence.

Ê}À> Ê«iÀÊ7>ÌÌÊ I do not grow in pots but in 6 trays of soil of about one and half square metres per tray. I have put castors under each tray so that they can be wheeled in any direction and I can allow them to make the best use of the light and I can make paths to where I want to move them.

I normally pot 15-by-15 plants or 225 plants per tray, but at the moment I just happen to have 17-by-19, which is 323 plants in each. I topped al of these in the 2nd week of growth, so that in total I now have 646 tops. I use for these almost two and a half cubic metres of soil and I have nine 600 Watt lamps hanging above them. It is a good rule of thumb that I can easily get around 1 gram per Watt and always have a total yield of around 5 kilos per harvest.

As long as I have had no diseases or insects affecting my plants or have had to deal with any other inconveniences that have a tendency to arise when dealing with growing, I keep a light hand. But a bit of pyrethrum, 100 % organic and made from chrysanthemums, in the beginning phase of the cycle cannot do any harm to use. In addition there are various precautions you can take against all sorts of pest, including against spint.

Your own hygiene and working cleanly are both essential and can prevent a whole bunch of heartache. Did you know that house plants often harbour spint?

On a Benjamin Ficus there only have to be seven lying in wait in order for them to explode in your bloom room to a population of 700.000. Of course you can also bring spint in from outside, but with a little bit of decent air management you will not have trouble with them so easily.

PLANTS BUDS

ÀÊ« «iÃÊ> `ÊV «>VÌÊLÕ`Ã I also expel the air outside, but first I let it run via long pipes under my floors so that the worst of the chill is taken out of it. By doing to I very rarely get spint in my space and if I did I could always put a filter in the system, right? The air does have to be fresh from outside because the buds as a result will remain more compact than if I had allowed warm air in, certainly when starting up the lamp, which is something I have learned from experience. Doing so suggests to the plants a morning glory, including the cold air that comes with it.

The depleted air exits my house via a carbon filter and if necessary via a heat sensitive valve partially back in to the blooming room again. If the filter is no

3ECOND USE IS ALSO RECYCLING

longer working optimally, then I am the first to smell it, before my neighbours get any wind of it, or ‘coincidental’ passersby feel compelled to phone a snitch line.

À Ê- ÕvvÊÌ Ê ÕLL iÊ Ten years ago I made my first skuff. Back then it was all about the Pollinator, a sort of slowly turning centrifuge that I had bought from Milla. The only drawback with it was that the finest filtering was not available so that there was relatively a lot of plant matter in the hash left behind, thanks to which the hash sometimes had a rather sharp taste and coughing is never really very good for the lungs.

I was pretty pleased then when Milla showed me six years ago how I could make Ice. With the Isolator of course:

silk cloths of with different fineness, that you hang in a bucket of icy water at about 4 degrees which with the aid of a food mixer inserted through the lid of the bucket you keep you weed waste churning with a large quantity of ice cubes. After an hour and a half of churning you get such pure THC from a single load of fresh leaf- and flowerwaste in the lowest silk bag, with no plant matter and no coughing. If you hold a flame next to the hash, it cooks as if there were no plant matter in it at all. If you have made it well then you may be able to make out tiny bubbles, and that is why these days it is also called Bubble Hash, premium quality Ice. That is a marvellous feeling, I can tell you, to make the best hash in the world. And all done in my own modest little kitchen.”

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"NKTLM

Ài } Ê Õ ÌÕÀiÊ-Þ `À iÊ

“Things are tough all round, eh?”

"Y *OE +ANE

Yeah, so I’ve been reading about this Foreign Language Syndrome lately. I dunno if you’ve heard about it, but basically what happens is this: some poor fucker has a stroke of some sort and if it happens in one particular bit of their brain (don’t ask me which bit: what am I, a fucking brain surgeon?) then they get this Foreign Language Syndrome thing. There’s been something like 48 cases of this weird shit reported ever.

I heard about it ‘cause a friend-of-a-friend in Newcastle’s aunt ended up with it. One day she’s a Geordie and the next thing she’s had a stroke and starts talking like she’s West Indian. Go figure.

Anyhow, I’m visiting and we’re sitting around talking about this when the buzzer goes and Stevie Grimm (so called this because of his sunny disposition: that’s sarcasm, by the way) answers and comes back with two guys following. They’ve come to score some blow. I don’t know them but they’re maybe in their early 20’s, white and they’ve got dreadlocks.

Now, I don’t know what you think about this kind of thing, readers, but personally I’ve got no time for it. To make matters worse, one of these characters are chatting away to Stevie kind of as follows: “Aiii, Stevie mon, ‘ave you any ganja, mon? Me an’ de bro’ ‘ere am lookin’ to score de weed” etc etc.

Stevie and I kind of avoid making eye contact at this point.

And it goes on in this vein for a few minutes and just as I’m thinking Jesus Christ I can’t fucking stand it any more, Stevie Grimm comes back into the room. He looks like he’s been crying (Actually, he’s been laughing: the cunt). Anyhow, some money changes hand and the two pseudo-Rasta-kids leave.

I’m a ball hair off being totally fucking speechless. But not completely: “Who the fuck were these two clowns?”

Grimm is totally stone-faced: “The one doing all the talking calls himself Zeb. I think his name’s Kevin, though. He reckons ‘ganja’ is a sacrament and all that bollocks. The one in the Bob Marley t-shirt I’ve met but I don’t remember the name. He’s Jamaican as well though. Now, I hope you’re not going to say anything racist” And at this point stoned hysteria ensues. I can’t remember Stevie Grimm even doing much in the way of smiling and here he is, with me, both of us stoned out of our fucking tits, laughing like we’re going to piss ourselves. Man, oh man.

Now like I say, I’ve got no fucking time for this kind of middle class white boy pretending to be black nonsense. It’s all wrong, and you look fucking ridiculous.

STOP IT. RIGHT NOW. The thing is that these wankers probably only get away with it because they live in Scotland and so bona fide Afro-Caribbean folks are few and far between. If they lived down South they’d probably get a fucking beating for taking the piss.

“Awright mon?” He says to me.

Anyhow, the thing is that while there are only 48 or whatever cases of Foreign Language Syndrome, there do seem to be a fuck of a lot more cases of Foreign Culture Syndrome like the cases I described. Still, it seems to be a condition that passes. This happens when the sufferer has pissed away their trust fund and decides that Babylon isn’t so bad after all as he speeds off in his new Porsche to his job as a financial advisor.

“Brand new. How are you doing?”

Comments? Email me at horribly_stoned_boy@hotmail.com

“Yeah, sure guys. Take a seat for a minute” says Stevie and heads out of the room to do the business. I’m left with these two fucking jokers. One removes one of those woolly type Rasta hats and shakes his minging dreads around.

“Ah, well yo’ kna’ ‘ow it is, blood. Gettin’ by. Gettin’ by. Can’t ax for no more dan dat”

OQNCTBS EK@ RG

>ÞÊ-Ì>ÀÊ vviÀÃÊ iÜÊ iÛi Ê vÊV

-iÝÞÊÃii Ì À Õ} ÊÃ ÃtÊ We tend to think that paper is white by nature, but that is a misunderstanding that is about to be challenged. The Brazilian rolling paper manufacturer Aleda has turned the world upside down with its revolutionary generation of transparent cigarette papers.

Although many people will at first sight of this innovative skin think ‘plastic’ and the health risks associated with it, Aleda can guarantee that it is actually made from 100% natural, plant-based cellulose-product.

Even more than that, the see-though ‘paper’ is in fact much better for one’s health than the traditional white cigarette paper (that contains chemical residues such as lead, arsenic and other heavy metals). The explanation for this is that the transparent paper comes from the production phase that precedes the ‘whitening’ of the paper.

In addition to the health benefits, being able to take a good lookk at the inside of your joint is of course quite a buzz. It is also very educational for beginner joint-rollers, who can see precisely whether the ‘goodies’ inside are well and evenly distributed throughout their spliff.

The transparent skins are the same length as the standard joint papers, but a little bit thinner. They have no gummed edge, but are easily sealed shut in the normal way and smoke just as tastily as regular skins.

Info: Kulu Trading Industrieweg 14, 1231KH Loosdrecht, The Netherlands.

Tel: +31 (0)35 693 22 66 // Fax: +31 (0)35 693 34 18 www.kulutrading.com E-mail: info@kulutrading.com

ÃVÕ iÊÃV> i DALMAN have just launched their new MINISCULE, the smallest and lightest miniscale ever produced. It measures only 71 x 35 x 12 mms and weighs only 33 gm. It is so small that it fits neatly into a cigarette pack with a pouch that still has room for your lighter.

This picture of the MINISCULE shows the actual size of this tiny scale.

Too high a temperature and the lowered air moisture level caused by it are among the worst problems the cannabis grower has to contend with. The arrival of the so-called ‘cooltube’ systems marked a big step forwards for indoor growing. In such systems the lamp in fitted in a tube, out of which the heat generated is sucked immediately away. The problem with that sort of fitting was that the light reflection was not sufficient; thanks to the very small angle of illumination it caused, the potential of the lamp was negatively influenced.

Day Star is a new step forward for this concept and promised to create a revolution within the cannabis world. It involves a reflector that is attached to the underside with a special sort of glass (Pyrex), that does not have a cylindrical shape. The Day Star makes use of a more highly advanced design, with which it is possible to effectively illuminate a surface area of up to two square metres.

Because each fitting can light up a space that previously needed two lamps, the Day Star system clearly saves energy. Of course, this also gives the system the ability to keep the heat and air humidity under control, for a start because the heat around the lamp is directly sucked away and so not given the chance to heat up the growing space. In the second place, it is possible to reduce the number of lamps used by half, which obviously has a direct effect on the temperature. The Day Star is simple to put up and to connect to the air ventilation. In addition, several Day Stars can be simply coupled to each other. They are deliverable with connections in diameters of 125 mm or 150 mm.

Info: www.greenguideeurope.com

DALMAN’S MINISCULE has all the usual miniscale features, with four modes, back lighting and even overload protection. It is marketed in three models, 150 gm x 0.1 gm, 300 gm x 0.1 gm and for higher precision 50 gm x 0.01 gm.

DALMAN have been well known since 1989 as Europe’s leading Distributor of pocket scales.

Their TRUWEIGH and other ON BALANCE designs are already popular throughout the headshop industry and they also market larger table-top scales with large bowls for the growing industry. They have also been distributing TANITA miniscales for more than 15 years.

DALMAN’S MINISCULE, as well as their TRUWEIGH, CHAMPION and other ON BALANCE models can be obtained from all good headshops.

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1DONQS D R T N G M D D Q & 3GD

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À Ü }Ê ` V>ÃÊ Ê Þ`À « VÊÃÞÃÌi Ã]Ê Àii Ê ÕÃiÊÃÌÞ i At the Green House Seed Company we love sativas, but we recognize the value of true indicas, with their great sweet taste, amazing production and short flowering time. The indica strains of our seed bank are incredibly strong plants, short and bushy, well balanced in taste and effect, with a strong stoned bodyfeeling. Indicas are easier to grow than sativas, allowing more concentration of feedings and resisting better to heat and cold. Any system is good to grow indicas, but they always give the most production in hydro systems. For this reason growers who are accustomed to hydroponic systems are more likely to perform good at growing indicas.

Indicas like to start their growth cycle with a higher EC compared to sativas (1.4-1.6). Normally we grow on 18 hours for 5 to 14 days, depending on the strain and the target size of the plants. Plants like the Great White Shark or the White Rhino are very bushy and need some good growth on 18 hours to reach the size for production. Other strains, like the Doctor or the White Widow are naturally more suitable for sea of green methods (SOG), with many plants on a square meter. The 18 hours feeding solution contains a higher N percentage than the P and K. We keep the pH at 5.5 during the whole 18 hours period.

At the Green House Seed Company we use many methods for growing hydroponics, but the most effective one has been open flush system with big 65 liters containers. We use rockwool flakes as a medium, the type that contains more air. This way we guarantee a well developed root system in a short time, as the roots can grow through the medium with extreme rapidity. Before using the rockwool to fill up the containers we wash it with a light solution at pH 5.5 and EC 1.0. This way the young plants will have no shock at the first contact with the medium.

The temperature of the air is kept between 25 and 27 degrees Celsius during daytime and around 18-20 degrees at night, a little higher than with sativas. Also the lamps are kept a bit closer to the plants, at an average 60 cm using 600 Watt systems.

As the 12 hours period begins we raise the pH of the feeding solution to 6.0, and then gradually up to 6.5 during the whole flowering process. This allows the plants to absorb better the P and K necessary to their flower development, and lowers the chlorophil level inside

A reasonably good substance with which to counter infestations of spint and green- or black fly, is a soap-methylated spirit mixture. Dissolve 20 grams of green soap and ten grams of methylated spirit in 1 litre of lukewarm water and then give the plants a thorough spraying; this will often do the job nicely.

Make sure that you spray the underside as well as the top of the leaves. If we repeat this application a few times (with a break of ten days between each application) the results will be clearly noticeable.

4HE $OCTOR

the buds. During flowering we raise the air temperature of a few degrees to increase resin production and speed up the metabolism of the plants. The air humidity is also strictly monitored and kept between 40 and 65% during the entire flowering cycle. Also the temperature of the medium is strictly monitored to ensure the ideal conditions for feeding intake and no stress.

During the flowering period we start flushing the medium once every 10 days using a light solution at pH 5.5 and EC 1.0-1.1. This process removes undesired salts from the medium, preventing plant intoxication and allowing maximum growth and bud formation. Besides, we use a fungus controlling agent to avoid dangerous bacterias and moulds to attack the root system.

A very important element of our cycle is the drying of the rockwool. When the plants start flowering, it is important to let the medium dry to a certain extent (50-60% water content) at least once a week before giving feeding solution. This increases the feeding intake and maximizes the flower production.

During the last 14 days of the flowering cycle we stop all feedings and wash the medium with a light flushing solution at pH 6.0, to eliminate the feeding residues from the plant, improving taste and effect.

For more details on specific indica strains of the Green House Seed Company we invite you to download the Grow DVD from www.greenhouseseeds.nl. It is a free DVD containing all information on how to grow Green House strains, plant by plant, week by week, from cloned to harvest!

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3GD "G@LOHN MR

>V > >Ê >âiÊ FROM 'ANJAMAN GROW SHOP !T THE LAST (IGHLIFE #ANNABIS #UP 'ANJAMAN GROW SHOP FROM THE "RABANT TOWN OF !STEN MADE A BIG IMPRESSION WITH ITS -' (AZE OTHERWISE KNOWN AS -AC'ANJA (AZE 4HIS SCINTILATING VARIETY LANDED A THIRD PRIZE IN THE "IO (AZE CATEGORY AND IS THE CREATION OF THE 'ANJAMAN HIMSELF *EROEN FROM THE EPONYMOUS GROW SHOP IN !STEN 3ADLY FOR ALL THOSE GROWERS WHO FANCY A STAB AT RAISING THIS SENSATIONAL (AZE IN THEIR OWN GARDENS THE VARIETY IS NOT AS YET FREELY AVAILABE "UT MAYBE AFTER THE NEXT #ANNABIS #UP Alas, the genetic make-up of this superhybrid, even for the most persistent questionner from among our reporters, remain for the time being (still) the secrets of the chef. And let us give Ganjaman the benefit of the doubts given the amount of piratry in the seed business... But he does offer a tiny glimpse under the veil of

that a plant is able to spread it roots laterally in order for it to end up as a sturdy and good-yielding plant. That is why he always uses, even when growing in smaller pots, the wide models. “In narrow pots you just constrict the plant and you get no decent side-branching and volume as a result,” according to Jeroen.

4HIS ALMOST TEN CENTIMETRE LONG -AC'ANJA BUD IS DRIPPING WITH CRYSTALS $A REAL THING THE PRIZE WINNING -AC'ANJA GIANT

4HE MOST SENSATIONAL ASPECT OF -AC'ANJA IS ITS EXTREMLY SHORT BLOOM TIME secrecy, revealing that one of the plant’s parents was an original Mexican Haze, and according to Ganjaman a powerful primal Haze is something you have to go back to if you’re seeking to breed an early blooming top hybrid. But, grins the schepper of the super-variety, “If you have a good sense of taste soort, you can tell what the other parent is.” This is poor consolation, because in the shop this exclusive variety is currently unavailable.

The most sensational thing about this Ganjaman hybrid is its extremely short bloom time: already after just nine weeks you can dig our your trimming shears. Although MacGanja Haze is not a pure sativa, she does tick off all the family characteristics: a long sprieterige plant and of course she has the trademark Haze-taste and smell, and that is something you can’t say about every Haze variety. The high is not something for the inexperienced smoker: many tokers trying it, says Ganjaman are flattened by a single spliff of MacGanja.

7 `iÊ« ÌÃÊEʼ ÌÌiÀâ Õ̽ The champion plant does its blooming under a 600 Watt lamp in a right royal (white) cement tub of 40 litres, in the house-brand Ganjaman soil mix. This cement tub was no accidental choice, since Jeroen thinks it is very important

The grow space in which the winning MacGanja plant was matured takes up only a single square metre. It is a simple construction of fireboard. A simple, small bathroom ventilator handled the supply of fresh air, the kieren in the construction dealt with the air replacement, and no hefty carbon filter was need thanks to the location in a large side-room. The plant was given 14 days’ pregrowth and reached about two metres high and yielded around a pound of superb buds. As well as the use of wide pots, another growingsecret from Ganjaman is the application of ‘bitterzout’, which ensures the plant has a good supply of the extremely important nutrient magnesium. It’s a trick that he learned in market gardening, where he was active in the past. Customers can profit from the trade knowledge and use the successful growing plan that Ganjaman has been using for years to harvest champion yields, and not just of Haze varieties.

The Ganjaman enjoys a good joke. One of his better is to nonchalantly invite growers who only know weed plants as 50 cm-high bonsai bushes to come over and check out his Haze. “It’s hilarious when you open the door and they fall over backwards at the sight of a plant nearly three metres high and completely covered with fat buds!”

-AC'ANJA A FEW DAYS BEFORE HARVEST

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Û>Ì Ê> `ÊV > }iÊ

BNKTLM "Y ,AZYSTRAIN

Throughout history innovation and change have found place in the common aspects of the day to day. What’s new today is old-hat tomorrow. The notion of interviewing the owner of a growshop in the UK has thus dwindled. So we decided to look at something innovative instead. Innovation prompts change, just as change emancipates innovation. Without getting too philosophical, this is ‘the way’. The cannabis world is full of both innovation and change, in a roundabout sort of way.

Cannabis users are Envisionists in the sense that the concepts they cultivate sometimes find practical place. While exhibiting innovative demonstrations of the mind, cannabis users can contemplate ideas without action, which ultimately inhibits change. During but the briefest moments of clarity however a pipe dream may become a reality in a practical sense. Every now and then, someone comes up with an idea that later finds place in the workshop, and then later upon the industrial stage. At which point the commercial tide-turns and everyone jumps on the bandwagon (or bandwidth) for a slice of the cherry upon the cake.

A pipe dream is a vision that is never really meant to find ground. It sits in the realms of fantasy, beside the lazy, hazy places and spaces, which don’t quite belong to this world. Like Cloud 9 or Shangri-La. These days however the metaphysical and the virtual often converge in mutual space. ‘Cyberspace’ is one such example. Hook yourself up to the web, and you’re free to explore a world of pipe dreams and crazy realties. Searching out the silliest websites on the Internet is highly amusing when stoned. The more eccentric the website the greater the entertainment value to be held. Just recently we found a website selling Wild Tea, no less “hand picked by specially trained monkeys”. Besides wetting ourselves with laughter, and then thinking about the consequence on the enslaved primates, we came to the conclusion that in this day and age absolutely anything is possible!!! Intoxicated by the surreal sense that we actually live in a real world full of wanton depravity (mail order next day), we came up with some of our own innovations that we think might one-day just find themselves in the ‘Dragon’s Den’. Not really, we were stoned. But you never know if the cannabis industry might find a place for them.

Firstly we’d like to introduce the concept of the ‘Hamster Kif Tumbler’ (there is no patent or copyright on this model). It’s ecological and it’s efficient. With a

> « À }Ê À ÜÃ «]Ê ÃÌiÀ`> The idea for a Dampkring grow shop was hatched some time ago when two friends, Paul (from Dampkring coffee shop) and Tim (from Kiwi Seeds) shared the vision that it was time for something completely different within this business in the Netherlands.

Times change, and once in a while, Growshopland has to take this into account.

The Dampkring Growshop wants to create a new benchmark, namely the Growshop of the Future! This is to be apparent not only in the interior and the vibe of the shop, but above all in the daily presence of specialised, reliable and qualified staff, co-workers who have a huge cumulative experience in the agricultural and market gardening sector. Service, quality, information and knowledge exchange are the pillars on which the company is built. In the sheer range of growing materials too the Dampkring aims to set itself apart from the average grow shop.

Beyond the standard offering of the cheaper and everyday growing supplies, the Dampkring Growshop specialises in having a huge range of exclusive and qualitatively high-value growing supplies from the international agricultural and market gardening sector.

The Dampkring Growshop is aimed primarily at the smaller, mostly organic growers. Growers who are eager to inform themselves about the various nutrients, pest control and growth & bloom possibilities, and who are interested in raising a qualitatively high-value product.

The new products and various grow systems can be viewed “live” in the shop, where a huge space has been set aside for a “show grow” - and it is not just the tourists who are popping in to take a look.

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very low sunflower seed to revolution per minute out-put, it will produce nothing but the finest quality hamster spun kif. The principle is simple enough. A large hamster wheel is attached to a lightweight central drive shaft and kif tumbler. In the good old-fashion Blue Peter way, this system could be made at home (not so sure about the sticky-back plastic on this one). When running (at night-time of course) a hamster will turn the running wheel with enough momentum to generate approx. 0.5g kif per 5g of trim-waste (we aren’t quite sure of the exact hamster to trim ration yet, but it’s a winner for sure). Different hamsters will naturally produce different grades of kif depending upon their individual running speed. Stupid idea huh? Yet how many grams of ‘Hamster Spun Kif ’ do you think you could sell in an Amsterdam coffeeshop, to American Tourists?

Some other innovations that someone, someplace, somewhere, might just be crazy enough to develop include, ‘The Self Cleaning Bong’. Tried of cleaning out the old bong water, cleaning the inside pipes, the bowl, etc (ok perhaps this isn’t so practical, but it has function, yes?). What about ‘Water Resistant Lamps/ Bulbs/Ballasts’? Perhaps the danger and/or prospect of spraying plants under a 1000watt bulb that can implode any moment might be a burden? Worried about spilling water on that ballast unit? A water-prove light out-put shouldn’t be that challenging to design, should it? Also how’s about rolling papers that are waterprove on the outside? Sheets that don’t stick together when wet? We live in rainy-old Britain remember, not sunny Spain!

The other ideas we conjured up where too silly, too offensive, or too brilliant to share aloud. We might suggest that the readers of Soft Secrets UK think up their own ideas, products, and designs, in an effort to prompt change. While the Netherlands, Israel, Canada, and New Zealand currently stand at the forefront of innovative horticultural applications and advancements, the UK is by no means light-years behind the rest. The number of practical innovators in the UK within the cannabis industry is on the rise daily. No doubt some schemes shall fall to the wayside as pipe dreams from time to time. Yet those with the brightest ideas are sure to gain results with dedication and time.

If you hadn’t realised the hamster thing was a joke, a parody of sorts. Seriously though, if someone develops a ‘Hamster Kif Tumbler’ we want the first test smoke! Please note, no animals where hurt during the cognition or formulation of this column. Neither do we suggest that any animals should be mistreated in the future. We all dig the same soil after all!

RGNO QDUHDV It all adds up to a genuine meeting place for growers looking confidently in to the future, who fly the flag for quality and not quantity as paramount.

We guarantee a place where staff will take their time with you and will provide you with honest and valuable advice. From nutrients to complete grow systems, we are standing by ready to meet our customers’ needs, all over a nice cup of coffee or fresh drink.

The shop The Dampkring Growshop represents the best seed companies in the world and offers a fine selection of seeds that will guarantee you a great harvest. The established names such Kiwi seeds, Reeferman Seeds, Serious Seeds, Soma Seeds, THseeds, Paradise Seeds, DNA and Delta 9 are all available in the Dampkring Growshop or via our web site.

The Dampkring shop is also the place to come for quality bongs, pipes, vaporisers, head shop gear, and hemp clothing.

With regards, the Dampkring Growshop team $AMPKING 'ROWSHOP 0RINS (ENDRIKKADE 4+ !MSTERDAM /PENING TIMES -ON &RI 3AT 4EL &AX WWW DAMPKRINGSHOP COM

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+HSDQ@STQD

i À}iÊ"ÀÜi

our Lord 2006, will never again allow a snack to slide down their throat without thinking about what the plongeur (that was his job: the man who officially in a restaurant washes the plates, but who in reality functions as a Jack-of-all-trades) did when he was treated worse than bad.

He pissed over the customer’s steak.

Humour, comedy, tragedy and journalism at its best.

Ê&EIJE 7IERINGA

"IG "ROTHER IS WATCHING YOU h)T WAS A BRIGHT COLD DAY IN !PRIL AND THE CLOCKS WERE STRIKING THIRTEEN 7INSTON 3MITH HIS CHIN NUZZLED INTO HIS BREAST IN AN EFFORT TO ESCAPE THE VILE WIND

SLIPPED QUICKLY THROUGH THE GLASS DOORS OF 6ICTORY -ANSIONS THOUGH NOT QUICKLY ENOUGH TO PREVENT A SWIRL OF GRITTY DUST FROM ENTERING ALONG WITH HIM v

/ Õ} ÌÊ« ViÊ> `Ê- > These days we watch something called Big Brother for amusement. Thanks to the Dutch television producer John De Mol, who first came up with the concept of shutting a bunch of people in studio / house and to follow them 24-hours a day with cameras. The hit format was subsequently sold worldwide. Big Brother as the name of De Mol’s success show; it would have amazed George Orwell....

De Mol was not especially original; experiments into human behaviour using cameras have been done by psychologists for years. But De Mol was the first who saw and sold it as entertainment.

The name Big Brother is certain to have been made up by some editor who had read or heard about the cameras in the book 1984 by that same Orwell. It is rather improbable that the heirs of Orwell protested. Because the world famous peep show has absolutely nothing to do with the macabre vision of the future that Orwell sketched in his most famous novel. In that book Winston Smith – Orwell introduced him in the passage quoted above – is an inhabitant of a sinister totalitarian state. The leader of this state is called Big Brother. Think about those types in places like North Korea who try to realise their Utopia, or of the other ‘big brother’, Brother Number 1 Pol Pot.

Truth, Winston Smith declares, just before a bullet is set to bore its way through his head, his immense love for and loyalty to Big Brother. And in doing so he has lost his last shreds of human dignity. The book is mostly mentioned in the same breath Aldous Huxley’s anti-Utopian Brave New World. Not unfairly, because both writers had quite a few doubts about morality and ‘progress”. But Huxley did offer certain solutions to the people by giving them the drug Soma and packaged his criticism as satire. Orwell by contrast offered not a shred of hope....

"ÀÜi Ê> `Ê ÃÊL Ã Animal Farm is if anything even better known than 1984. This too is about a totalitarian state. The setting is a farm. The farmer is a heavy boozer and the animals decide to take over the running of the place. The book is barely 100 pages thick, but Orwell did not need any more to make it clear that in the end it would make no difference whether the animals themselves or a drunken farmer ran the show. Of course it is a satire on the Leftie groups of those days who praised the Soviet system.

The left-wing intelligentsia must have nothing to do with the biting criticism of communism. On the contrary: it was the time of all power to the workers, study as a human right, even for dummies, in which art that did not value every illiterate,

3OME /RWELL QUOTES !LL THE WAR PROPAGANDA ALL THE SCREAMING AND LIES AND HATRED

COMES INVARIABLY FROM PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT FIGHTING %ARLY IN LIFE ) HAD NOTICED THAT NO EVENT IS EVER CORRECTLY REPORTED IN A NEWSPAPER h&OUR LEGS GOOD TWO LEGS BAAAD &OUR LEGS GOOD TWO LEGS BAAAD v 4HE SHEEP IN !NIMAL &ARM In a totalitarian state there is no place for individual feelings of love and beauty and absolutely no place for freedom of speech. Everything is for and by the State. Everything is for the glory of Big Brother. In order to consolidate his power the leader knows that he has to have total control. There is no place for objective thought. History does not exist, the story is written anew each day. The thought police is his most powerful weapon; every inhabitant of Orwell’s Utopia lives in a house in which the cameras are directly connected to the controlling authorities.

Winston Smith’s human feelings – he is in love and therefore sometimes withdraws himself from the gaze of the eyes of Big Brother - do not square with the social paradise in which the state and not the citizen determines what happiness is.

Orwell’s dark vision of humanity is nowhere so unpleasant as at the end of 1984: a civil servant of the Ministry of

was called elitist. Because are not all people equal? In Animal Farm the pigs, who announced themselves to be leaders (equal!!!) giving this a twist that has become one of the most quoted phrases in literature: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” To the leftie world-improvers, Orwell had come down in their estimation.

They argued that such an observation was proof of an embittered reactionary. In their turn, the right had their own problems with Orwell. Had he not fought for the communists against the fascist Franco regime in Spain? Apparently not everyone understood that you could fight against fascism, without being a supporter of some other dubious ideology. And that was that.

What Orwell ultimately did in his work was to pose questions and offer criticism of parties, religions and other powers that knew with certainty what was good for people. Think for yourself...

'EORGE /RWELL

Homage to Catalonia is for me Orwell’s master work. Nowhere else does the idealist, writer, journalist and fighter come together better than this, thanks to the sobriety of this penetrating, personal report of Orwell’s experiences at the front during the Spanish civil war. It has parallels with that other masterpiece describing the experience of writers at war, Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves. Which is not especially surprising: both men were writers, observers who participated.

Only Graves did it years before: his narrative comes from World War 1.

Orwell did not describe war as heroic.

In his memories, people were central. It was not about battles, not about politics or military strategy. It was all about the individual, in circumstances in which they were compelled to act inhumanly.

There is so much to say about it, but this quote actually sums it al up: “One of the essential experiences of war is never being able to escape from disgusting smells of human origin. Latrines are an overworked subject in war literature, and I would not mention them if it were not the latrine in our barracks did its necessary....

I thought: “Here we are, soldiers of a revolutionary army, defending Democracy against Fascism, fighting a war which is about something and the detail of our lives is just as sordid and degrading as it could be in prison...”

Orwell was no pacifist, but a realist who was aware that the individual is always subordinate to the ruling class.

A bullet wound in his throat put an end to Orwell’s military ambitions. A happy accident, otherwise this detailed analysis of soldiers, their feelings and the images burned into their retina might never have come about.

Down and out in Paris and London was published in 1933. In 1928 Orwell had already begun the research for this book, his debut. There he was from one day to the next a tramp. First he explored for a while the hostels for the homeless in London. If you read it you cannot help but be reminded of the saddest tales out of Dickens. Hours in the queue for a cup of soup, after which the compulsory sermon from the pastor, followed by a spot of de-lousing and going to sleep on your wooden bed with eyes half open to make sure that your neighbour does not pinch your most valuable possessions: your tobacco and your blunt razor. “A tramp without a razor loses his dignity,” Orwell discovered, who back then was still known as Eric Blair (he was born in Burma as the son of a colonial civil servant and an attentive mother.)

The passages that take place in Paris are brilliantly written. Orwell had a hawk eye for strange types and bizarre circumstances. Let’s keep it short: anyone who has read the book, in the Year of

The novels of Orwell are still readable.

The semi-autobiographical “Coming up for Air,” is an especially fine, melancholy book about Orwell’s alter ego George Bowling. An insurance broker with a safe-but-fusty existence; wife, children and stuck fast in the in the groove of day to day existence. When Bowling wins a modest amount, he decides to keep it all for himself and use it to make a pilgrimage to the village of his birth, Lower Binfield. As a child he was happy there, the village was paradisiacal and later he had a girlfriend. The Lower Binfield that Bowling sees after 40 years brings his illusions to an end. Everything is just as complacent, ugly and contentless as in his current life. Philosophically considered, Orwell writes here that happiness is an illusion for masking unhappiness. A cruel joke. The war clouds that presage the arrival of World War 2 to cover the daydreams of Bowling reinforce that idea. The other novels also all take place in the petty British milieu out of which the main characters try to escape. It always eludes them.

ÃÃ>ÞÃÊ> `Ê iÌÌiÀÃ The letters and essays of Orwell have been collected together. All worth the effort. Such, such were the joys offers a depressing picture of Orwell’s time at a sombre public school. Typically British. Also typical of Orwell to attack it in such a brilliant and moving essay.

A Hanging is the report of the execution of a Burmese soldier to which Orwell is a witness: “It is strange, but until that moment I had never stood still and pondered what it meant to destroy a person who was healthy and fully conscious.” And then he describes how glances were exchanged, how an officer who had to hang the noose, grumbled whether it could not have been done after coffee. As a spectator he was astonished at the systematic approach of the ‘hanging’.

Orwell died in 1950, apparently of TB, somewhere on an island off the Scottish coast. His writing was not working out any more, he sought out solitude and felt disillusioned. The only thing that still gave him pleasure was motorbike riding.

Not exactly something for someone with TB, but again it was appropriate for Orwell. It is a bitter irony that 1984 (he wrote it in 1948) in 2006 appears to be more a prophecy than a futuristic speculation. We have long since invited Big Brother inside. Not via the cameras of the amusement industry. But via the cameras that are now capturing images in every street, every bar, during every event and on every road. And also via the PC, Big Brother knows more about us than we can imagine. If only we knew who Big Brother is.....

Watch out in this Brave New World!!!

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v Soft Secrets is published by Discover Publisher BV P.O.Box 362, 5460 AJ, Veghel, Netherlands Telephone: +31-73-5498112 Fax: +31-73-5479732 maryjane@highlife.nl E-mail: Publisher: Boy Ramsahai Editor:

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